A Livingston resident has criticised West Lothian Council for allowing a build-up of household waste that’s attracting rats.
John Pittman, who lives at Forestbank in the Ladywell area, says that since a new bin service was introduced last summer, rubbish has been piling up and is not being collected for weeks on end.
“We now have rats at the bin area and it is absolutely vile and disgusting,” said John. “I’ve been here for two years and I’ve logged lots of complaints.
“I don’t think these bins have been emptied since November.
“Th council have said it’s due to the weather and that other people are fly-tipping. Other people are coming in when the rubbish piles up and are leaving stuff.
“But it’s every week, and when the seagulls get in to it it’s all over the place and the wind blows it everywhere. Now we’ve actually got rats coming back and forth to it.”
The bins are for people living in the flats at Forestbank, and are communal recycling bins. Previously residents had their own personal bin areas.
John continued: “We had bin storage areas with keys and a bin in it, which we would take out once every two weeks.
“So they changed that and installed all these communal bin areas throughout Livingston. They’ve done it in Ladywell and Craigshill. When you go through Ladywell, Fernbank is the same it’s all stacked up
“There’s just not enough bins and when they’re full there’s nowhere to put your bags so people have no option but to leave them on the floor beside them.
“They’re just not getting emptied. I was told two weeks ago that someone would be out but they didn’t appear.
“It’s been like this every month since they installed them last summer. It’s not the worst it’s been but it is a regular occurrence.”
The Courier got in touch with West Lothian Council who apologised to residents and ensured a prompt clean-up of the site.
A West Lothian Council spokesperson said: “ We can confirm that a clean-up of the site is taking place and we would like to apologise to impacted residents.
“We will continue to explore further means of intervention to try and reduce the number of incidences of dumping of excess waste around communal bin stores.”
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