CASTLE Cement has been told to clean up its act after residents complained of a cloud of smoke hovering above their houses.

The Environment Agency served an enforcement notice on the Clitheroe firm yesterday following complaints about the haze.

Inspectors visited the firm's Ribblesdale works and found the firm "in breach or likely to be in breach" of its authorisation to operate at the site. The authorisation outlaws persistent hazes and odours that cause offence to local residents.

The firm was given until 4pm to get rid of the haze by reviewing the operation of the two kilns at the plant.

They put the unwanted cloud down to "adverse weather conditions causing the plume to ground prematurely."

A spokesman for the firm said: "We acted immediately by reducing throughput to the kilns and will monitor the situation closely until weather conditions improve." The enforcement notice came as Pendle MP Gordon Prentice won a promise from the Government that the public will have full access to new public pollution registers in the wake of the row over Castle Cement emissions.

Mr Prentice told Environment minister Michael Meacher: "You will know of the tremendous controversy about pollution from the cement industry. Will you say more about the content of the public registers that are to be given details of the integrated pollution control processes?

"If some of that information is to be out of bounds to the general public because it is allegedly commercially confidential, many people's faith in the new system will be badly dented."

Mr Meacher promised that "commercial confidentiality" would not be allowed to prevent the public from getting information which is merely inconvenient to the company concerned and said that full information would be available in public registers and on the internet.

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