A street in Worcester has been left like a rubbish dump with piles of black sacks strewn across pavements and bins bulging with waste as some residents disregard the city's new refuse collection service.

People have to walk into the road to skirt the mounting hazard in Avon Road, Tolladine, which is now attracting various scavenging animals.

One resident, Pansy Austin who has lived in Avon Road for 22 years, contacted the Worcester News saying the bins were not emptied by Worcester City Council last week and people were not using their wheelies correctly.

"People are filling them to the top and they are also surrounded by black bags of rubbish, which the council will not take. Some of the bins have fallen over. There must be 50 bags there.

"The folk are leaving them outside the front of the houses where animals can get at them. Pedestrians have to walk into the road to get past them. It is such a shame. We have had leaflets and they are in different languages."

The head of the city council's environmental services, Mike Harrison, said: "Avon Road is a real problem area - we anticipated it would be. It is worse than we thought it would be."

He said the council did empty the bins last week but did not take all the rubbish as some of the residents have not used the new refuse collection service, separating recyclable waste from other refuse, since it started.

"We cannot throw black sacks of mixed rubbish into the truck when we are collecting recyclable waste because it will contaminate the load."

He said there were a lot of different nationalities in Avon Road and it was a transient population.

"When we put the leaflet out we did not get any response from people in Avon Road. I do not think they understand it. They do not realise there is a change in what we are doing."

"When we delivered the bins, they were left outside. They did not take them in. We have to get the message across to them that they cannot opt out of the system."

"There may be 15 to 20 per cent of people who do not understand what we are doing. It will come down to one or two per cent and I don't think they will take any notice. They will end up in court."

"We need to set up a meeting with landlords, councillors and officers to put a plan together to tackle it. I cannot promise to solve it overnight but we will sort it out."

Mr Harrison added: "We are going to have to clean up what is there. It is not just a pick-up job. It is a health cleaning job because there are syringe needles in the bags. We'll have to put on a special service."