THE fight against fly-tipping has been given a shot in the arm after the Government earmarked £350,000 to stamp out Worcestershire's "fridge mountain" fiasco.

The grant is a slice of £40m of Government cash set aside for local authorities to cope with the new Euro rules on fridge disposal.

Herefordshire County Council is to get £106,669.

Worcester city councillor Derek Prodger, who has been trying to tackle this environmental issue, welcomed the grant.

"The money will allow us to create new storage and disposal facilities at Hill and Moor landfill site, near Pershore," he said.

"There has been a problem with collecting abandoned fridges in the past and this is a welcome development in tackling it."

A new Brussels regulation requires the removal of CFCs from every domestic fridge to capture the gases blamed for the destruction of the ozone layer.

But no recycling plants were built to prepare for the new rules - landing local councils with the bill for storing fridges which retailers are no longer willing to collect.

The grants are intended to plug the gap until April, when money to store fridges will be included as part of the department of the environment's block grant.

By then, more recycling plants should be available to deal with the scores of unwanted fridges piled on top of each other.

Personal blame

In the summer, an MPs' inquiry cleared Mr Meacher of personal blame for the failure to prepare for new Euro-rules

The environment committee, instead, heaped the blame on officials in the department of the environment, who kept Mr Meacher "in the dark" about the crisis.

However, they criticised Mr Meacher for "ill-judged" comments in which he claimed the Government had been let down by the European Commission.

The £40m handout follows fierce criticism of the department of the environment for allocating only £6m to the problem, earlier this year.