MILITARY vehicles will continue to be part of Weymouth’s Armed Forces Weekend celebrations, despite concerns over emissions, a meeting of the full town council has decided.

The event, which attracts thousands of visitors to Weymouth in June every year, features a parade of veterans, military vehicles and marching bands along the Esplanade.

But concerns were raised among councillors at Weymouth Town Council about the amount of fuel used by the vehicles in the parade amid the authority’s declaration of a climate emergency.

A general motion raised by councillor Richard Nickinson about Armed Forces Weekend was raised at a meeting on Wednesday evening.

Weymouth mayor Graham Winter said he was ‘puzzled’ about why the motion was brought to full council as the event was previously agreed to go ahead and its budget approved.

Councillor Christine James said she was aware of the need to reduce emissions but felt it was ‘a little bit hypocritical’ to target military vehicles in the parade given the recent amount of traffic on the seafront.

She said: “I do understand about green and clean and climate change but I think at some point it’s a little bit hypocritical seeing as we have had an awful amount of cars on the seafront chugging out fumes and not being dealt with very well.”

Councillor Ryan Hope was among those confused at why the motion had been raised – but theorised it was down to a ‘concerned’ group of councillors who feared the vehicles would be banned under the economical and climate emergency agreement previously signed by the council.

Citing a drafted events proposal which includes an environmental assessment, he said: “The purpose of that is not to stop these events happening. It is for them to look where the environmental impacts are being made by their events, look to offset those environmental impacts in other areas to reduce the overall impact of the events.”

Councillor Tony Ferrari agreed that the issue needed to be debated – but feared that any prohibition of military vehicles could cause them to appear at other events.

He said: “The motion is derived from comments that said they would seek the exclusion of these vehicles.

“I am entirely in support of what Ryan is proposing because what we need to do is to mitigate the problems these vehicles cause.

“But if we follow a political based agenda of trying to eliminate carbon, what we will do is do the exactly opposite effect to the one we seek to achieve because if we ban these vehicles from here, they won’t sit at home, they will at a parade at somewhere else’s seaside town. “The implication of that is that we will be unable to mitigate their carbon footprint and move the business from Weymouth hotels to other hotels at other seaside resorts. “I believe the right strategy is to acclaim the great contribution that these vehicles make and mitigate their carbon footprint, certainly not exclude them and I don’t think this is a worthless debate. “I think this is an important issue for both the remembrance of our service people and the business interests of Weymouth.” A substantive motion, which aims to hold the weekend event in its current form for the rest of the current administration, was unanimously approved by councillors.