More than ten times as many cars are being dumped on Bradford's streets as there were five years ago.

Bradford Council says the plague of car-dumpng has reached 'epidemic proportions'

About 50 abandoned cars are reported in the city every week - costing the Council £130,000 a year to remove them.

And the numbers are increasing, according to the Council's abandoned-car team.

Almost 4,000 vehicles have been removed this year, compared with just 300 disposed of by the Council in 1998.

"We seem to be getting more and more abandoned cars each year," said support services manager Melanie Wilson.

Damian Fisher, principal waste management officer for street cleansing at Bradford Council, described the situation as an "epidemic".

"It is mainly due to the negative value of scrap metal these days which means it costs owners to have their cars taken away, so they just dump them instead," he said.

"But we have to pay contractors to move the vehicles which is why we had to get a separate budget to deal with the extra cost."

Dumped cars are just part of the problem, according to police who work in partnership with the Council to target abandoned cars in the district and remove them as quickly as possible.

Abandoned vehicle co-ordinator PC Vaughan Evans said: "Since we have been working with the Council, there have been 500 fewer car fires in Bradford because we are working faster to remove those abandoned."

He said the Council's previous method of serving a seven-day notice on abandoned cars gave people chance to move the vehicles.

"We now get them shifted within 48 hours of them first being reported but sometimes they can be moved within hours," said PC Evans.

And, he said, it was definitely working because, despite the increase, there were fewer dumped vehicles left littering the streets.

He said police were also working with the Council to target nuisance cars linked with criminal activity.

"A lot of people buy cars very cheaply and drive them around without tax or insurance and then just dump them.

"They are the vehicles we need to move quickly to reduce the risk of theft, vandalism or being set alight," he said.

As from January 1, motorists failing to tax their vehicles will be automatically fined £80 in a new crackdown by the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

The measures introduced to reduce the number of untaxed vehicles on the road will eliminate the need for cars to be spotted without tax discs.

Instead, the DVLA's computer database will pinpoint car owners with out-of-date tax discs and fine them accordingly.

Councillor Mike Attenborough (Lib Dem, Eccleshill) called for the Government to help banish the problem of dumped cars by bringing Britain into line with other countries in the European Union.

He said: "In other EU countries car manufacturers have to take old vehicles back and recycle them but the Government has delayed doing this here and we are stuck with the cost and the inconvenience."