A million cars will be reported abandoned this year, costing local authorities millions of pounds to remove, assuming current trends continue.
The sharp increase in dumping has been put down to a range of factors, including new European Union rules that require that cars be scrapped in an environmentally friendly way and the fact that the value of scrap metal has fallen.
Dumping may now account for one in four of the 2 million cars scrapped a year.
The Local Government Association said 829,000 vehicles were reported abandoned in England and Wales in 2002-03 and that 420,000 of these were destroyed.
That represented a 28 percent increase over two years in the number reported. An increase of just 21 per cent would see 1 million mark hit this year.
The rise will hurt taxpayers, as local authorities must meet the bill.
The EU rules, which promote environmentally friendly disposal and raise the costs of dismantling cars, were largely passed in the UK last year.
Other reasons for the rising costs of disposal include tougher MOT tests, increased crime and the fall in demand for spare parts.
In some countries, the responsibility for disposing of cars rests with the manufacturers, which will largely be the case in Britain after 2007. This means dumping is likely to diminish, but could lead to manufacturers putting up their prices as they attempt to cover the costs.
According to the LGA, only 7 percent of authorities had prosecuted for abandonment - amounting to 4,600 prosecutions - as they felt the costs of doing so would not be justified by the impact on the dumping rate. The Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency is not able to prosecute.
Stronger legislation has been introduced this year and an advertising campaign has led to a 21 per cent rise in notifications of disposal compared with last year.
Figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs showed 300,000 cars were dumped in England in 2002-03. Financial Times