UK residents fume over piles of uncollected rubbish

London: Hundreds of thousands of families are having to cope with a post-Christmas waste mountain because councils have failed to collect their rubbish for almost a month.

Local government chiefs were on Sunday blaming snow and ice for the lack of collections — even though there has been no fresh snow in much of England in more than a week.

Some cited the health and safety of binmen required to carry out "heavy lifting in icy conditions".

Problems have been cited across the country — from Exeter in Devon to Epping in Essex and Warrington in Cheshire. But the patience of ministers — already frustrated at the continuing inefficiency of local council services — was cracking.

Local Government Minister Bob Neill demanded: "We need to think again about how we maintain these basic services over Christmas. It is disappointing some councils haven't showed more initiative about how to ensure people still get the services they pay for."

Residents in Exeter, who have waited a month for their bins to be collected, have been told health and safety rules are to blame. Some, whose rubbish was last collected on December 8, have been informed they will not get another collection until January 8. Caroline Lee, 45, who lives in the St James area of the city, said the rubbish meant she had to stop her children from going out to play.

"Rats and seagulls have attacked the bags and there is rubbish strewn around the streets," she said. "It is an absolute disgrace — it's like living in a third world country."

Strike

In Birmingham the problem was blamed on binmen who went on strike over equal pay rules. More than 800 took action on December 20 but the dispute continues to disrupt collections.

Marketing executive Sarah Hanson, 41, said her street was an "environmental hazard". She said she had been waiting three weeks for her bins to be collected in Harborne and rats and foxes were being attracted to the hundreds of bin bags piled up on the road. Other areas where residents face long delays before their bins are emptied includes Tory-controlled North Somerset.

The seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare has not had waste collections since December 10.

The Local Government Association said some council staff were working during holidays to clear the bin backlog.

The promises, however, failed to reassure critics. Doretta Cocks of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections said: "All their complicated recycling systems are undermined by a bit of bad weather. This was never a problem when they saw their job as simply collecting the rubbish once a week."