SCRAP dealers are being forced to clean up their act.

Fifty Environment Agency officers have spent the last month hammering home the anti-pollution message in a bid to get scrap dealers to comply with new legislation.

Seventeen sites were visited in Kirklees and 13 received notices to comply with the directive or have their operations suspended.

The crackdown is the culmination of a campaign which aimed to get operators to comply with the directive, which came into force last November 3.

The European Union rule means that all companies which scrap vehicles should take out polluting substances - such as oil, petrol or batteries - before the vehicles were sent to be crushed or finally disposed of.

Companies should also dismantle cars on an impermeable surface, such as concrete, so that polluting oil or lubricating liquids cannot seep through and contaminate the ground.

Kevin Ingram, of Cooper Bridge Spares, Wakefield Road, Mirfield, said his firm had been working for several months to ensure it complied with the directive.

He said the business had been taken over by a larger company, Doncaster Motor Spares, in January. It had worked hard to ensure all its six sites fully complied with the new legislation.

Mr Ingram said smaller businesses would simply have to comply with the directive, as they needed a licence to trade and it would be revoked if they were found to be breaking the rules.

The Environment Agency - headed by former Kirklees Council leader Sir John Harman - had given scrapyards and car dismantlers a 12-month amnesty before having to comply with the new rules. But next Wednesday is the first anniversary and is being regarded as the final deadline for meeting standards.

Officers from West, South and East Yorkshire visited more than 170 sites and served 130 notices on firms for failing to comply with their licences.

Ian Cowie, the agency's environment manager team leader, said: "We are taking it very seriously from an enforcement point of view.

"All sites that didn't comply with the regulations were served with a notice giving them four weeks to get up to scratch.

"If they don't comply within this time we could suspend their licence, or even stop them from operating," he added.

"Ultimately, people who continually fail to comply with the law could end up in court and face a hefty fine or even go to prison."