Brighton man 'living in a tip' with two months' recycling

Grant Phillips said it was “ridiculous” that council crews had not been to Warbleton Close in Whitehawk, Brighton, since October.

He said residents of the cul-de-sac have been “living in what looks like a tip” with recycling left uncollected.

Grant said: “People have just given up putting things in the bins, they’re overflowing, with stuff all over the road being blown everywhere.

“We are conscientious of our area, we do want to make the roads nice, however it’s blowing into people’s gardens.”

Grant's house faces directly onto the ever-growing pile of rubbish (Image: Andrew Gardner / The Argus)

Grant resorted to keeping his recycling inside his home.

He said: “I’ve got two Ikea bags full of stuff, the big blue ones, how long do the council want me to keep this sitting here?

“The bags are in the way, we’ve now got a cardboard cupboard where we are keeping them.

“It’s just been Christmas and we’re trying to make the place look all right.

“You go in the cupboard and they fall out, if it doesn’t get done soon we’ll have to bag it and bin it through the normal refuse.”

The issue was first reported on November 23, which marked well over three weeks without a  collection.

Grant was disappointed by the response from Brighton and Hove City Council. 

He said: “I got the usual reply, ‘sorry to hear this and we’ll get it looked into,’ however nothing was collected.

“The cut and paste answers are really frustrating now, they promised to us it would be collected before Christmas.

The 50-year-old says the street prides themselves on recycling, however this seems to be continually missed (Image: Andrew Gardner / The Argus)

“Whenever the neighbours see each other, we say ‘it’s rubbish’.

“Everybody agrees it’s disgraceful, and we’re left scratching our heads.

“I’ve done so many tweets and finally we’ve got some attention, that’s what it’s taken to get to this point.”

Council leader Phelim Mac Cafferty responded to Grant’s online outrage.

Posting on Twitter, he said: “I’m really sorry to see how long the bins have taken to be collected.

“I emailed Cityclean management earlier and asked for teams to be deployed to Warbleton Close.”

Grant said he didn’t want to have it escalated to this point, adding: “I shouldn’t be ‘trolling’ people to try and get something done.”

Brighton and Hove City Council was approached for comment by The Argus on Wednesday and by Thursday morning much of the rubbish had been collected.

On Thursday a spokeswoman said: “We apologise to residents for the length of time it has taken to collect recycling at Warbleton Close.

The communal recycling bins were contaminated, but we should have emptied them before now.

“The refuse bins have been emptied and the recycling has been allocated to a catch-up crew for collection.”