ECONOMIC, political and personal rivalries will be played out before a planning inquiry which will determine the future of 500 jobs at a glass bottling plant near Chester.

Quinn Glass has opened the case in favour of retrospective planning consent for its factory at Ince which is already producing containers for the food and beverage industry.

Inspector J Stuart Nixon will hear evidence from both sides before making a recommendation to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott as to whether the factory should be allowed to continue.

The planning application was "called in" by Mr Prescott's office before the general election on grounds the project had "more than local significance" after lobbying by Labour MPs in South Yorkshire where Quinn's rival firm Rockware is based.

But fighting Cheshire's corner will be fellow Labour MP Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port & Neston) who will give evidence to the inquiry at the beginning of December.

Rockware, which controls 40pc of the UK glass bottle market, has most to lose if the Quinn plant is saved and has hired a top barrister to argue why it should not be.

The battle is also personal. There is said to be no love lost between Sean Quinn, managing director of Quinn Glass and his fellow Irishman, Paul Coulson, who heads Ardargh, the owner of Rockware.

There are also high stakes for Chester City Council which originally approved planning permission but was successfully challenged by Rockware in the High Court, landing council taxpayers with a £45,000 legal bill.

Last month, it lost another battle when Judge Andrew Gilbart QC overturned its decision to grant an operating permit to Quinn and condemned its "unacceptable and lax"

approach. Opening the case for the applicant, Neil King QC, said: "This application is of great importance to the economy of the region and to the UK glass industry as a whole.

"That is signified by the fact that it is supported by both the local planning authorities within whose area the application site lies and by Cheshire County Council, but is opposed by one of the UK's existing glass manufacturers, Rockware Glass, whose focus of objection, in seeking to have the application called in by the Secretary of State, was on economic grounds.

"That focus has now shifted to the more local impacts of the development about which those bodies with local planning functions and local democratic accountability are satisfied, and which have no direct relevance to or effect on Rockware's interests at all."

The inquiry, at Chester's Queen Hotel, is expected to last 16 days and come to a conclusion early in the New Year.