MOUNTAINS of unwanted fridges are building up across the North-East as councils bear the cost of new European regulations.

Local authorities are facing bills of up to £1.2m to stockpile thousands of old fridges, because they have been banned from dumping them in landfill sites.

The fridge mountains are growing because facilities to remove the harmful chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are not available in Britain and are not expected until spring.

In the meantime, council taxpayers are bearing expensive storage costs.

Durham County Council has 700 old fridges piled up in a warehouse in Aycliffe, County Durham, and estimates that it will cost £1.2m to store and dispose of them.

Chris Tunstall, council director of environment and technical services, said: "We're getting extremely worried that it's just going to snowball.

"The Government has allocated £6m nationally but if you think they are talking about three million fridges being disposed of every year it doesn't go very far."

The harmful CFCs are found in the fridges liquid cooling agents and the insulation foams. The technology is available to remove the cooling agents, but not the foam.

Since the regulations came into force on January 1, many major fridge and freezer retailers, such as Comet and Currys, have stopped their take-back schemes.

Middlesbrough Council expects to amass 3,000 fridges and freezers this year and is paying a private company to "fridge sit" at a cost of £25 to £35 for each appliance.

The council does not charge to pick them up and fears that if it did it could lead to more people dumping them.

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council's scrutiny committee meets tomorrow, to discuss the problem and will look at charging for collection.

The Government has come under fire for agreeing to the regulations in mid-2000, but not sorting out the necessary disposal plants.

Euro MP Martin Callanan, a member of the European Parliament's environment committee, said tax payers in the North-East were footing the bill for Government ministers' incompetence.

"We've spoken to a number of local authorities in the North-East and they are extremely worried about it because it's going to cost them an awful lot of money," he said.

Karine Pellaumail, waste and resources manager with Friends of the Earth, said it was appalling the Government had not acted sooner.

A spokesman for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: "We're confident that new facilities, containing specialist machinery, will be in place by the spring."