The hunt is on to find a new way of dealing with the district’s rubbish, after a flagship scheme hit the rocks.

Bradford and Calderdale councils were planning to team up on the £300m household waste scheme at Bowling Back Lane, Bradford, but last year the Government suddenly withdrew £62.1m of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) credits from the project.

The decision cost the authorities £5m.

The Council’s meeting of the Executive yesterday heard that the district’s waste treatment contracts, which were due to expire in 2015, were hopefully being extended until 2017.

But a new solution now needed to be found for the district’s long-term waste treatment needs, which again may involve teaming up with another authority.

The Executive requested that officers draw up a report into the nature and likely cost of a “replacement solution” within six months.

The meeting also heard that a legal row between Bradford Council and the Government over the pulling of the funding was settled out-of-court just weeks before a judicial review was to be heard. Councillor Andrew Thornton, executive member for the environment, said the exact amount of the payout had been kept private “at the insistence of Defra’s lawyers”.