An outraged pensioner has told how refuse collectors drove off with her bin - before telling her to retrieve it in the back of her Ford Fiesta.

Gill Leith, 72, and her partner Charlie Clackson returned home last week to find their black bin had disappeared.

After searching high and low the couple, of Island Road in Hersden, telephoned the city council’s waste collection contractor Serco.

The next day, they were told by the firm the bin had mistakenly ended up inside the lorry, along with piles of household rubbish that had been collected.

“The bin men must have known it had gone in the lorry,” said Mrs Leith.

“Why didn’t they put a note through the door?”

But her real shock came when Serco asked her to collect the bin from the firm’s depot herself, in her small hatchback.

“They said we could go and collect it, by which time we were seeing red,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. We told them it was up to them to return it, as they had taken it away.

“We said we only have a small car, but were told it would ‘slide onto the back seat’. It had been inside a dustcart, with all that refuse! Again we said it was up to them to return it.”

After Mrs Leith’s protests, Serco dropped off a new bin for the couple on Monday.

“But that doesn’t alter the fact that they expected us to collect it and put it on the back seat of a Ford Fiesta,” said Mrs Leith. “It had been inside a dustcart!”

City council spokesman Rob Davies said: “We’re sorry to hear that Mrs Leith was not happy with the service she received and are pleased her new bin has arrived safely.”

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