A hazardous waste amnesty has proved popular with 'huge demand' leading to large queues at Norfolk recycling centres this weekend.

Norfolk County Council has held an amnesty at its recycling centres at Keteringham near Wymondham and Hempton, near Fakenham, where people could drop off hazardous materials, like paint and household chemicals and cleaners, free of charge.

The council issued a warning on its website that there 'may be a queue' as the amnesties last year proved to be 'extremely popular' but visitors to the site at Ketteringham experienced a wait of about 50 minutes on Saturday.

Susan Hewitt who travelled from Pulham Market to take paint and paint stripper to the Station Lane site on Saturday morning said: 'I should think there was 100 cars in the queue. They were letting one car in at a time. It was just crazy what was going on. It was chaos - they just didn't have the manpower to handle it.'

A spokesman for Norfolk County Council said it was 'busy' and that there were queues but that it was down to a 'huge demand' at the time but insisted people were getting onto the site to dispose of their waste.

The spokesman added that the amnesty was on between 9am and 6pm on both Saturday and Sunday giving those that wanted to dispose of items the time to do so.

Further events are taking place on:

• September 12 and 13 at Caister, Pump Lane, and Dereham, Trafalgar Business Park, Rash's Green

• September 19 and 20 at Mayton Wood, Little Hautbois, Coltishall and Thetford, Telford Way

• September 26 and 27 at King's Lynn, Willows Business Park, Saddlebow, PE34 3RD

Log onto www.norfolk.gov.uk/Environment/Waste_and_Recycling/Waste_disposal/Hazardous_waste/index.htm for more details.