The development control committee of its local authority, Suffolk County Council (SCC), is meeting on Thursday to decide its fate.

Clowes has fought the planning application for a waste transfer plant that will process construction and demolition waste on the grounds that dust from the works would prove disastrous for its state of the art factory, which it began moving into at the start of this week.

Chief executive Ian Foyster said: I have done everything I can. Now I have to wait and see. We managed to get the decision deferred pending a site visit [which took place last month] and we demonstrated well why a builders' reprocessing plant shouldnt go there.

SCC minerals and waste planning manager Viv Codd has recommended the plant be granted planning permission subject to a number of conditions designed to control its environmental impact.

Codd said that seven of the 16 conditions imposed on the application related directly to dust.

However, Foyster commented that he couldnt see how a 2m high fence would stop dust being blown towards the Clowes factory.

If the waste transfer plant gets the go ahead, Foyster said that he would have to police the conditions that had been imposed on it very carefully.

*The contents of the William Clowes Museum are to be mothballed while National Lottery funding is sought. The museum has been under threat since Clowes sold the site to Tesco in 2002.

by Ruth Nicholas