MILITARY vehicles that parade in Weymouth during the town’s annual Armed Forces weekend need to reduce their emissions if they are still to be featured in the celebrations, a councillor has said.

Armed Forces Weekend annually features a parade of veterans, military vehicles and marching bands along the Esplanade.

But concerns have now been raised about the amount of fuel used by the vehicles in the parade amid the authority’s declaration of a climate emergency.

Councillor David Harris explained that organisers must either reduce emissions of the military vehicles or mitigate the pollution caused to conform to the council’s policies. The matter will be discussed before the full council this evening.

Cllr Harris said: “We are very much in favour of supporting the armed forces, there is no doubt about that.

“The motion came up because someone thought that we wanted to ban the vehicles.

“Because of the climate emergency, we are asking them to look at what they are doing. We don’t want to ban them, we want them to conform to our new events policy about emissions.” 

Louie O’Leary, a Conservative councillor, however called it a ‘serious overreaction to a tiny problem’.