POOLE'S household wheelie bin collection faces serious disruption after seven of the council's 12 troublesome refuse collection vehicles broke down.

Bins will go uncollected from homes in all eight rounds in the borough as the teams struggle to empty the 55,000 wheelie bins a week using five vehicles.

The council is desperately seeking vehicles to hire and hopes that two more Poole carts can be fixed and put back on the road.

"We're going to struggle for the next 10 days," admitted Peter Pawlowski, head of consumer protection, whose department has already received thousands of calls from residents whose bins have not been emptied on time.

"We apologise. We are working to try and keep the service on the road until we are able to provide a new refuse fleet," he said.

Two of the £100,000-plus, six-year-old vehicles have a cracked chassis, two need new gearboxes and it is likely that four vehicles will prove too costly to repair.

The fleet has long proved unreliable - the vehicles were a poor specification to begin with, are driven on rough terrain at the tip and are used to their capacity.

They are due to be replaced from mid-October but the problem is to keep them on the road until then.

Mr Pawlowski said residents should put their bins out on the normal day but if they had not been collected the day after, put them out again on the correct day the following week.

Extra rubbish should be put in black bags and he said these would be collected when left out beside the bins. Black boxes should be collected as normal.

He urged people not to call up if their street had been missed. "We will know about it and we will rectify it as soon as we can," he said.

Cllr Bob Williams, executive spokesman for environment and prosperity said: "We recognise and sympathise with members of the public who find themselves inconvenienced by the lack of refuse collection.

"We are working as hard as we can to keep as many vehicles on the road as possible," he added.