When Chris Stewart put his recycling rubbish out for collection, he naturally expected to come home later that day to find it gone.

Instead, he returned to his Wincheap home to find binmen had piled rubbish outside his home and then left it because it was apparently in the wrong type of sack.

Aghast, the 47-year-old Kiwi complained to Canterbury City Council only for it to happen again.

At one point he had 16 bags of festering rubbish piled against his modest house when he had only put out two before leaving for his work in local government.

Chris, a former New Zealand policeman, said: “It was so bad that if you opened the front window the rubbish would have fallen through and into my living room.

“I could not even enter my own home at first, as the bags of rubbish were behind my flood board and resting against my front door.”

The bags had council stickers on them warning they would not be collected because they contained the wrong type of rubbish.

But inside was paper, cardboard and food.

Chris feared a discarded lit cigarette could set light to the entire pile and set fire to his home.

He added: “The council needs to look at the contractors and change its working practice. But it’s funny how things started to happen when I told them I would be speaking to the Kentish Gazette about this.”

Council spokesman Rob Davies apologised on behalf of council contractors Serco for the problems.

Mr Davies said: “When it happened the first time, we thought it was the rubbish collection crews putting all the sacks in one place to make it easier to pick up, and asked them to stop doing it.

“When there was a second incident, we investigated further, and it appears it was the street cleaning team that had done it.

“We have now spoken to that team as well. We hope this will now be an end to the issue.”