THE owner of a Stourport car breakers' yard claims his business has been consigned to the scrap-heap by bureaucracy and red tape.

Roger Hall, of Potters car dismantlers' yard, has been running his one-man business on the Sandy Lane Industrial Estate, off Worcester Road, for 35 years.

He has now been told by the Environment Agency he must carry out work costing tens of thousands of pounds to bring him into line with new laws or be forced to close.

Mr Hall said: "They have told me that, due to new EU rulings which have led to changes in UK environmental law, I must either concrete my entire yard or provide a de-pollution unit."

Mr Hall claimed concreting his acre-sized yard would cost £150,000.

A de-pollution unit would involve a hydraulic draining rig to provide access underneath cars to drain fluids.

Mr Hall said: "It would have to be housed in a building and that would cost around £70,000."

Without the work, Mr Hall was told, he would not qualify for a licence, without which he could not operate.

Mr Hall said: "There is no way my small business, which has a turnover of £35,000, could absorb these huge costs. I am going to stop operating as a breakers and rent the yard out."

He has been told the work is needed to prevent oil leaking into the ground from the cars as they are being drained.

He said his site was clean, however, and he had never caused any problems with pollution.

Mr Hall added: "I live on the site so it is not in my interests to have it running in oil. It must be clean here because the amount of bird life and nesting birds we have here is amazing."

Most upsetting to Mr Hall, he said, was that he was only told in November of the measures he must take.

He went on: "It is the way it has been done. I am being forced out of business after 35 years.

"I understand there must be environmental laws but the irony is that the work I do is, in fact, recycling."

Russ Jones, environment officer at the Environment Agency in Kidderminster, said: "I have visited Mr Hall twice and I understand he is unhappy at the lack of notice but we have been given a short time scale by central government."

He said the new law would come in on February 1 and was part government regulations and a European directive.

Mr Jones said: "It is connected with a tightening up of the law concerning how vehicles are disposed of, also involving the DVLA.

"Fluids like engine oil can no longer be just poured out into old cans. They have to be collected, accounted for, sent off and recycled."

Two other scrap yards in Kidderminster, both bigger than Potters, were to undertake the work, Mr Jones added.

He said: "I know Mr Hall has been there a long time and he has never caused any problem but we have no choice. This is a new law and our hands are tied."