AN AWARD-WINNING curry-house chain has been given an ultimatum to clear up tonnes of fly-tipped tyres or face further action from its landlord.

Bradford-based Akbar's rents a car park in Leeds Road, Thornbury, which is used by customers visiting its Cafe de Akbar eatery.

But Shahid Khan, of landlord Long Term Development, has claimed Akbar's had failed to honour a pledge to secure the site against intruders, and as a result about 20 tonnes of tyres as well as heaps of other waste had been fly-tipped there.

The company has denied the accusation.

Mr Khan said: "A site visit in April was the final straw. I said, 'Now you are affecting other tenants. People are complaining. Look, you need to clean up your act.'"

He said if the company did not resolve the problem by the end of this month, they could "risk losing the tenancy agreement on the car park".

The car park is on the site of Thornbury's now-demolished tram sheds, and elsewhere on the site are a range of other businesses, including three tyre firms: fitters Zee Tyres, collectors Licensed Tyres and recyclers Jacks Tyres.

Mr Khan said while the dumped tyres were nothing to do with these firms, the business owners were growing increasingly concerned that people would associate it with them.

He said: "It looks like they have done all that, but they haven't."

But Akbar's reacted angrily to the accusations it was not doing enough to tackle the flytipping, and claimed the the landlord had not been in touch with them about his concerns.

Office manager Naz Hanif said it had reported the flytipping to Bradford Council, and handed in letters found among the rubbish which could show who was responsible.

She said Akbar's had a security guard on duty working in the car park in the evenings, but believed it was the duty of the landlord to install fences and clear flytipped waste.

She said: "That should be the responsibility of the landlord. We are paying the landlord rent. It is his responsibility to secure the car park."

John Major, Bradford Council’s assistant director for environmental health, said: "We are grateful that evidence of an address found in the waste was passed on to the Environmental Enforcement Officer who followed this up and visited the address.

"The officer's investigations did not prove fruitful and unfortunately we were unable to identify the perpetrators of the fly tip in this case .

"As this is private land, the responsibility for clearing the fly tip rests with the occupier or owner of the land."

Jacks Tyres has recently applied for partly-retrospective planning permission for a tyre disposal business on the site, which has so far attracted 15 objections.

Jacks Tyres' owner Michael Hughes said he thought people were seeing the dumped tyres next-door and thinking it was to do with his firm.

He said he feared he would not get his planning permission as a result, meaning his six staff would be out of a job.

He said: "If this gets shut down, they are all out of work, it's as simple as that."