More than 100 dirty nappies are rotting in bags outside the house of a young mother who can almost see the refuse collectors' depot from her door.

Contractor Sita's base is less than half a mile from Sharice Schooley's ground-floor flat in The Crestway, Hollingdean, Brighton, where the rubbish has been festering for more than a fortnight.

The sacks have not be collected since Miss Schooley, 23, brought her baby son Brandon, who was three weeks old yesterday, home from hospital.

Now the mother-of-two fears for her children's health as the stinking rubbish bags pile even higher outside the front door of her one-bedroom flat.

She said: "I am trying to keep the place as hygienic and clean as possible for the baby and get everyone to wash their hands when they come in.

"But now flies from the bags come in every time I open the front door.

"I can't use spray to get rid of them because of the baby."

Miss Schooley, who is recovering from a Caesarean section operation, is using about 50 disposable nappies a week which are filling up sacks dumped outside her home.

She has called Sita, contractor for Brighton and Hove Council, every day since she came out of hospital.

She said: "They keep telling me they will come within a day but still haven't turned up.

"All they said they could do was apologise.

"It is stressful enough getting used to a new baby who wakes up three times in the night to be fed as well as coping with this."

The smell from the bags is now so bad that Miss Schooley will not let her six-year-old daughter Sinead play out because she cannot leave the front door open to keep an eye on her.

The young mother is one of hundreds of householders still waiting for weeks of rubbish to be collected after the service was thrown into chaos following a change in collection days.

A council spokeswoman said Sita hoped to clear all the refuse in the Brighton and Hove by today.

She said: "When it is all over and up and running we hope to have a much better service for local people.

"They should see a vast improvement once all the refuse collectors have got used to the new rounds and the teething problems have been ironed out."