CAR breakers around the New Forest and Southampton areas claim their businesses are being put at risk by councils who pick up old vehicles for nothing and pass any charge on to the council tax payers.

Hundreds of cars from the Southampton City Council and New Forest District Council areas are finding their way to yards at Portsmouth and at Poole in Dorset.

Charlie Homer, who lives in Southampton and runs a yard at Landford on the edge of the New Forest, said: "My business is being taken away by Southampton City Council, who are paying a scrapyard, not from the Southampton district, but from Poole in Dorset, to collect abandoned cars and any car anyone wants to get rid of.

"I have spoken to ten other salvage firms locally who are shocked that Southampton City Council should favour Poole in Dorset, when we were not given an opportunity to tender for the contract. The local salvage yards here also have to pay out large sums of money for their waste disposal licences and for the de-pollution laws."

A spokesman for Southampton City Council said the council did tender in October, 2002.

"A number of local companies did respond, but they were not considered appropriate. Dismantling cars these days has to be done to quite stringent regulations," she said.

New Forest District Council has its district's unwanted vehicles collected by a local contractor and then taken to a dismantler at Portsmouth. A spokesman said: "We did sound out a number of local firms, but only one replied."

One long-serving Forest dismantler who has noticed a "drying up'' of vehicles going into his yard is Robbie Sillence from Holbury, who fears further problems from "end of life vehicle'' regulations which come in next month.

Citing more constructive schemes in operation in Scandinavia and referring to problems caused by the way the government was dealing with unwanted fridges and regulations regarding care homes, he said: "Unfortunately, we have politicians who are idealists, but we need industrialists to show us how to make businesses economically viable."