A blot on the district's landscape has been snapped up for just £500 by Bradford Council.

Yesterday's decision by the authority's executive will ensure a long-awaited clean up of the Manywells quarry waste tip in Cullingworth and restore it to public use.

Manywells is currently owned by the Crown but has lain dormant since the contractors, Wastepoint, went into liquidation in 2002.

The Council's powers over the site were restricted without its formal ownership, and the Crown wasn't prepared to manage the site itself.

But now, about £5.8 million will be spent on removing 90,000 tonnes of rubbish, controlling gas leaks and transforming the site. Funding will come from the Government's environment department, Defra. However the executive's member for regeneration and culture, Councillor Simon Cooke (Con, Bingley Rural), who serves the ward in which Manywells stands, criticised the role of the Environment Agency in the saga.

Speaking at the meeting, he said it could have ordered a clean-up without the Council getting involved. "What has taken place here raises huge questions about the operation of landfill sites and questions about the Environment Agency," he said. "The biggest failure of all this, is the failure of the Environment Agency - which failed to enforce on this site. It has taken several years with the Government to get to this stage - to the business of restoring the tip so that it is attractive and, more importantly, safe."

However a spokesman for the Agency said: "After the company owning the Manywells site went into liquidation, the liquidators disclaimed the site, which meant that the permit no longer existed. So, when the permit 'disappeared' we were no longer able to carry out the job of regulating the permit, and could not order a clean-up.

"The funds provided by the former permit owner when it was granted the permit to run the site reverted to the Crown after the company was liquidated. Bradford Council later made a successful application to the Treasury in 2004 for those funds in order to undertake remediation of the land."

l Yesterday's meeting of the executive also saw the setting up of a Lord Mayor's Bradford Kashmir Trust for victims of the South Asian earthquake, the approval of the second phase of the district's children's centre programme and the setting up of air quality management areas in Manningham Lane, Thornton Road and Mayo Avenue following a major pollution survey.