Wigan Council's crackdown pledge on eyesore dump

The fly-tipped waste outside the empty home

Outraged neighbours contacted the press to highlight the disgusting state of the backyard of the address on Henrietta Street in Leigh.

Items including a bath and a sink along with dozens of bags of rubbish have all been abandoned in the area at the premises, leading to fears of rats being attracted to the area and risks to public health.

The town hall has confirmed it is starting enforcement procedures to get the house, which is currently unoccupied, cleaned up.

Adam Barrett, who lives in nearby Manchester Street, said: “It has been in that state for at least a month and my main concern is rats.

“We’ve had previous issues with them in this area.

“Someone’s obviously had a new bathroom fitted because there’s an old bath and sink dumped there, and then there’s just loads of rubbish and broken bits of wood.

“It looks like a breeding ground for vermin and I have serious environmental health concerns about it.

“I don’t want rats coming into the houses just because some people are being irresponsible with their rubbish.

“I would like the council to try to find out whose the bags of rubbish are.”

Wigan Council confirmed it was sending an environmental enforcement officer out to Henrietta Street to look at the problem at the end of last week.

As it is empty the town hall has promised to do a land registration search on the house and start the legal process enabling employees to enter and clear out all the waste.

The council has repeatedly spoken out against fly-tipping and urged residents to report any examples they see to the town hall either through the local authority website or using the ReportIt app.

The number of fly-tipping reports fell by a third from 2,529 in 2013/14 to 1,676 last year, according to Wigan Council figures obtained earlier this years under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Meanwhile there were 1,058 complaints about dog mess in 2017/18: a 54 per cent increase from 687 in 2013/14.

The authority credited promotional campaigns encouraging residents to contact them about offending for the big increase in reports.