A GOVERNMENT handout to help councils pay for the storage of fridges classified as hazardous waste under new EU rules has been labelled a "con" by a leading Swindon councillor.

The Advertiser revealed last month that Swindon Council could find itself having to pay £500,000 for a new, safer way of disposing of fridges because a ruling from Brussels dictates that, from January 1 all commercial and domestic refrigerators must have their insulation removed before being destroyed at landfill sites.

No company in Britain has the machinery to do that, meaning the council and all others in the country is faced with the prospect of storing them.

The Government has now handed out a total of £6 million to local authorities to pay for the problem which was included in the financial settlement received by each authority on Tuesday.

According to Councillor Ian Dobie (Con, Haydon Wick), the lead member for Swindon Services, the cash Swindon will receive will fall far short of what is needed.

He said: "It is included in the financial settlement we have got from the Government, but it's impossible at this stage to tell what money we have got.

"If I'm really cynical, I would say it is a con. Six million pounds across the whole country is a joke it's a very small amount of money."

Geoff Davies, team leader waste management at the Council, said: "We are receiving double the fridges we normally receive. One man apparently had a van full of them recently."

The new ruling is said to have caught all councils, the Government and the Environment Agency unawares.

Now there is expected to be a race by all local authorities in Europe to attempt to buy the expensive machinery needed to deal with the fridges from firms in Holland and Germany.

Until then, Swindon Council will have to find a suitable storage site likely to be Shaw Landfill Site where it can take the fridges that people put in its recycling centres.

Because of the ruling, major electrical retailers like Curry's and Comet are reported to have already stopped exchanging new fridges for old ones, meaning the number left in the council's hands is expected to soar to 13,000 a year.