The county councillors responsible for the Javelin Park fiasco should hang their heads in shame.

At a time when council budgets are being squeezed and cuts are being made to vital public services, it is galling to think they’ve already squandered more than £3 million of our hard-earned money on a myopic, vanity project to build an outdated incinerator.

But that’s by no means the farcical end of it.

This week, we learn that Urbaser Balfour Beatty, the company hoping to build the bonkers burner, is launching an appeal to try and overturn the decision of Gloucestershire County Council’s planning committee, which quite rightly heeded the views of local residents and threw out the company’s application for the plant back in March.

Because, in its infinite wisdom, the county council’s previous administration decided to sign the 25-year contract for the facility before planning permission had been obtained, there’s no telling how much we’re ultimately going to have to cough up for this mess.

There has been talk for a long time of a £16 million penalty clause but what we do know for sure is that because GCC signed the contract prematurely, it is now in the ludicrous position of having to fund UBB’s appeal – an appeal against the decision of its own planning committee!

The councillors who put pen to paper on the contract were warned at the time by their own scrutiny committee that they were about to sign away taxpayers’ money but they ignored their party colleagues and arrogantly ploughed on regardless.

Last week plans to jail reckless bankers were unveiled.

It’s a good idea but it doesn’t go far enough.

We also need new ways to hold our elected representatives to account for their gross incompetence and cavalier attitude to frittering away taxpayers' money.