Bradford Council is likely to miss its recycling target by 11,000 tonnes this year.

Six months ago the authority accepted a £2 million plan to solve Bradford's waste crisis but it has not worked as effectively as had been hoped.

The district is not recycling enough of the 220,000 tonnes of household rubbish it produces each year, and new Government rules mean the Council will be fined £10 million unless the issue is tackled.

The recycling plan pinned hopes on residents doing their part by fully using a series of recycling schemes currently being trialed across the district. This would have boosted the amount of material collected before the end of the financial year in March, and then seen the schemes rolled out fully across the district later this year.

The plan included:

l recycling paper, glass and cans from 140,000 homes through kerbside collections

l collecting garden waste from 100,000 homes for composting

l a £340,000, two-year marketing programme to urge residents to use their recycling bins

l preventing trade waste being dumped at domestic waste sites. Companies which dump for free cost the Council £360,000 a year and take up domestic landfill space.

But Richard Wixey, the Council's director of environmental services, said: "We are currently recycling a projection of 19 per cent for the financial year which is up three per cent on last year.

"We are improving, but we are not going to achieve the 24 per cent Government target."

However he believes the district will have turned the corner in 12 months. If all goes to plan, the district's 120,000 homes with wheelie bins for paper will soon be getting specially-designed boxes for glass and cans to fit inside them.

Mr Wixey said: "We are also looking for different types of collection for properties where there isn't the space for wheelie bins.

"For example, in Saltaire there is a bag-recycling scheme.

"We may miss the target this one year but we should hit it the following year."

Councillor Anne Hawkesworth, (Con, Ilkley) Bradford's Council's executive member for the environment, said: "We should never be satisfied if we don't achieve what we set out to do but it was a big task. But I am surprised, from the discussions that we had six months ago, to see that we can expect to hit 24 per cent next year. It is amazing really."