A serious rat infestation on a Croydon road is being blamed by residents on a decision by the local council to remove their outdoor rubbish bins.

Residents say they have been forced to foot the bill for expensive pest control as a result of the Croydon Council decision to remove the bins in March 2020, which meant that their rubbish was left in plastic bin bags on pavements.

Eastlondonlines spoke to residents of Oval Road, in Addiscombe, but most wished to remain anonymous. They said they had to “spend considerable amounts on pest control” as “rats are running around front gardens between children’s toys”. They have also complained that the bag trial “created a big issue with fly-tipping that we didn’t have before”.

They added: “The lights stopped working in the bathroom and when the electrician came to investigate, he said the cables had been chewed through by rats”.

The council had threatened residents with action for non-compliance during the bag trial despite the lack of public consultation on the scheme in the first place.

Resident Melanie Felton told a meeting of Croydon Council last month that residents had their bins taken away nearly three years ago in March 2020 without proper consultation from the council and have since “been ignored”.

Councillor Scott Roche, Croydon Cabinet Member for Streets and Environment replied: “An investigation with pest control has been taken” and is due to be “completed by the end of October”. He then blamed the previous council administration for failing to leave enough funding to resolve this issue.

The bag trial started after councillors and waste disposal company Veolia replaced recycling bins with multiple large wheelie bins, which were then removed because they blocked pavements and made them inaccessible to wheelchairs and prams.

One resident said if the council “collect[ed] the old recycle boxes when the new larger bins were delivered there would not have been this issue”.

They added: “I cannot believe that anybody in their right mind would even consider this bag trail as a viable solution to the issue”.

According to Veolia’s website, the busiest roads in Croydon are cleaned “on a daily basis” others are “swept at least once a week” and the remaining roads are “cleaned every four weeks”.

Resident Daniel Wall told Eastlondonlines: “Not a day has passed since the bins were removed that there is not food, dirty nappies and broken bottles scattered along the road” which has attracted rats and other vermin.

There is currently a 12-week delay to deliver new bins in Croydon, increasing the risk of more vermin throughout the borough as food waste bags line the streets.