RESIDENTS who wake up to stinking rubbish outside their doors every Friday have welcomed council plans to tackle the mess.

Each week rubbish bags in the Park District in Weymouth are picked open by seagulls and litter is seen strewn across the streets after the binmen have visited.

Weymouth and Portland Borough Council’s street cleaners have been congratulated for clearing it up later in the morning but council chiefs are hoping to help find a solution to prevent the mess.

Andre Fokes(CORRECT), 44, of Walpole Street, said seagulls picking at the rubbish wake him at night.

He said: “We can hear the seagulls outside at four o’clock in the morning and they make a right mess.

“If you put a cover or sheet over it when you put it out it stops it.”

The focus groups will be held in Melcombe Regis with a view to doing more across the borough if successful.

Amanda Benson, also of Walpole Street, said she has noticed the problem getting worse again.

She said: “People are quite good down our street covering up their bins.

“I notice others putting their bins out early and when they put it out a few days before collection it gets scattered all over the road.

“I put mine out quite late and you could get away with putting it out really early on collection day if you can.”

Residents said the streets were previously cleaned straight after bin collection in the early morning.

But cleaning vehicles are now seen at around 9am so people have to side-step the rubbish on their way to work or school.

Judith Sadler, of Hardwick Street, said it is worse in summer.

She said: “One day it looked like Beirut after a bomb had hit. It stank.

She added: “There’s one and a half hours in between collection and cleaning when the traffic has distributed the rubbish everywhere.

“Without the man with the handcart it would be worse.

“He deserves a medal.”

“Some drains in Derby Street are not cleaned too so they stink and people can’t open their windows.”

Cynthia Riggs, 77, of Brownlow Street, added: “There were nappies all over the place two days before collection and the council came out and cleaned up.

“If they made a communal bin cupboard in the street that would be something.” Other residents said occupants of Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs) did not use brown food bins and put bin bags out early.

But Ken Whatley, chairman of the Waterside Weymouth Community Forum, said he sympathised with the HMO occupants.

He said: “If you’ve got one room and bags of stinking rubbish you are not going to want it in there.”