The cost of capping toxic waste at a leaking landfill site in Elstow is almost triple the original estimate, it emerged this week.

Deputy mayor of Bedeford Charles Royden has revealed that Bedford Borough Council faces a bill of £10million after officers found that five of the nine pumps which are essential for controlling toxic waste at the Elstow Landfill Site were out of order.

The site had previously been the responsibility of Beds County Council.

When that authority was abolished in a shake-up of local government in April last year, it was expected that it would cost £4million to regenerate the site.

But Mr Royden claims that problems have been caused because it had been neglected.

Mr Royden, the environment portfolio holder at Borough Hall, said: "I think that the county council hadn't got a grip on the whole project and have really been quite negligent.

"They ignored warnings from the Environment Agency and we are now left to deal with their toxic legacy.

"The appalling financial legacy of the high-taxing poorly performing Conservative county council is well known, but the individual examples of the contempt shown for local residents have the power to shock."

But Conservative Councillor Tom Wootton, who held the highways and waste portfolio on the cabinet of Bedfordshire County Council and who is now a member of the borough council, defended the work of the defunct authority.

He said: "They say they were handed a bunch of nettles, we say they were handed a bunch of roses. My attitude is that they didn't have a clue what they were taking over.

"They conveniently forget that the county council had a recycling rate far better than the borough council yet they talk to us like we are not interested in recycling and waste. "They recklessly promised tax cuts and didn't know what they were taking over."