The fridge mountain that threatened to swamp Bradford has almost melted away.

But it has left an annual £400,000 bill in its wake.

This time last year, Bradford Council chiefs were hit by new European rules, introduced with little warning, which meant they were stuck with around 1,000 dumped refrigerators they could not dispose of.

The EU regulations, aimed at reducing the risks from toxic components, meant that only licensed waste disposal firms were allowed to take the fridges away to ensure they were dismantled in an environmentally-friendly way.

The trouble was that not one firm in Britain had the right licence, said Councillor Martin Smith, pictured, chairman of the recycling committee.

"The only one already existing in Europe is in Germany."

And that brought fears that the steadily growing collection of residents' disused fridges and freezers - which was clogging up vast amounts of storage space - could soon overflow.

According to Council officials, the 1,000-fridge mountain threatened to become a 10,000-fridge Matterhorn before a disposal operator could receive the right Government accreditation and start taking the appliances away.

Finally, though, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs got a licensing scheme running and the last of the machines will soon have been whisked away by a waste disposal firm in St Helen's, Merseyside, said Coun Smith today. However, the financial burden will not go away. It will soar to around £400,000 a year from the next financial year.

According to Richard Wixey, the Director of Environmental Protection and Waste, his department will have to cope with 12,000 fridges this year - more than double last year's haul - partly because shops are selling more new models and partly because they have now stopped offering to take the redundant old machines in part exchange or to dispose of them free of charge.