Fridges full of rotten food dumped outside flats

The waste was dumped last week on a drive by garages behind a block of flats on Lingfield Court, which is off Hamstead Road, not far from Sandwell Valley Nature reserve.

Two large piles of rubbish – one of them including a filthy mattress, a microwave oven, paint buckets, wood planks and bricks – can be seen from residents homes.

The second pile, which is about 15 feet away from the first, includes metal furniture rods and a fridge-freezer, which was dumped still containing its contents of pizzas, meat and burgers.

The meat has since started to rot and attract vermin and foxes.

A 29-year-old local mother, who asked not to be named, said: "It's disgusting. People seem to think that because this bit of land is away from the road, they can treat it like a rubbish dump and get away with it, but then there's no CCTV here.

"The freezer is particularly unpleasant because the meat that was inside it has started to rot and go mouldy and I've seen and heard the foxes that have been attracted to it.

"I dare not clear the food away myself as I have a three-year-old and I don't want them exposed to the kind of germs I'd pick up."

Stephen Gabriel, strategic manager for Regulatory Services, at Sandwell Council urged people to contact police with any information.

He said: "This is another highly irresponsible and illegal incident of dumping which is rightly condemned by local residents who find it upsetting to find this kind of rubbish left by their homes.

"I would urge anyone who may have evidence to whom may have been responsible for it to report it to the police.

"The council is determined to reduce this type of dumping and in recent weeks two men have been ordered to pay several thousands of pounds in fines and costs at the local magistrate's court for similar incidents."

It is the latest pile of rubbish to blight the streets of Sandwell. Council chiefs launched a fresh crackdown on fly-tipping across the borough last summer after the clean-up bill topped £180,000 in 12 months.

Bosses insisted that they were committed to investigating all cases to trace culprits and bring those responsible to court.

Derelict pubs, patches of wasteland and alleyways are among the sites commonly targetting by fly-tippers. The owner of a Great Barr business, FryDays fish and chip shop in Hamstead road, hit out at tippers last year who she had blamed for turning customers away.

Pam Vowles said that residents living nearby were leaving their rubbish in bin liners and dropping it at the back of her shop.