MOTORISTS were left trapped in their streets after fly-tippers dumped a mountain of rubbish on a back road.

Residents living near Back Green Lane in Great Lever were left facing a four-foot high pile of junk when they tried to drive their cars out of their garages.

The pile, made up of tree trunks, carpets, paint cans, cabinet doors and a settee, is the latest in a series of fly-tipping nightmares for Bolton residents and meant householders were unable to drive out of the road.

Kathleen Black, aged 65, of Rishton Lane, said: “I should have been picking up a friend from hospital on Tuesday morning, but I had to let her down because I couldn’t get my car out.

"As soon as I saw it I rang the council to tell them it was completely blocking myself and other residents in.

"You wouldn’t be able to get an emergency vehicle up there too if there was a fire - it can’t get through.”

Miss Black was left angry after council bosses initially refused to move the junk because the path is officially an unadopted road, but they came out to take it away the following day, saying there were “exceptional circumstances”.

She added: “I was told they wouldn’t come to an unadopted road. That’s their get-out clause — ‘if it’s an unadopted road, it’s your problem’.”

“These fly-tippers don’t consider residents. The thing is, there’s a tip less than two miles away from here. I just don’t understand their mentality.”

The Bolton News reported earlier this month how residents in the unadopted Glen Avenue in Deane were furious after the council refused to clean up a mattress, couch and other rubbish left, arguing it was the responsibility of "adjoining land owners".

About £2.4 million has been cut from the environmental services budget at Bolton Council since 2010, which has led to a 35 per cent reduction in cleansing resources.

And Cllr Sufrana Ismail, the council's cabinet member for community services, said she believes the cuts could be having an effect.

She said: “The council is prosecuting more. We’re highlighting the prosecutions and it’s been reported by The Bolton News, so people are more aware.

“We’ve had to make cuts to service because we’ve had cuts from central government, so the frequency of the cleanliness is less — whereas previously fly-tipping might have been cleared straight away, now it might take longer.”

Cllr Nick Peel, the councillor in charge of environmental services at Bolton Council, said as a rule the council do not clean up private property — but did so in this case.

He said: “I suspect in the cases of big vans full of rubbish they tend to go for unadopted roads to dump the items because they are off the beaten tracks and there’s not a lot of houses on them.

"It is on roads in industrial estates or country roads where these big mounds tend to appear.

“We have to ask the public to be vigilant and to pass on descriptions of vehicles and registration plates if they see people flytipping.”

A spokesman for Bolton Council said the rubbish was cleared up on Tuesday morning, but they had not yet uncovered who is behind the fly-tipping.

Anyone with information about fly-tipping can report it to the council on 01204 336632.