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Disgusted residents are “living in squalor” as streets in a community are overrun with rats and piles of rubbish.

People living in Wavertree, Liverpool, have hit out at the “abominable” state of their roads, with heaps of rubbish dumped outside addresses and rodents scurrying around the litter.

Roxy Ruane bought her home in the area in 2018 but says the neighbourhood is not what she thought it would be.

“You can’t move because of the amount of rubbish and it’s not just fly-tipping,” Roxy said.

“It’s constant. The more fly-tipping, the more we see rats. Our alleyway is disgusting, there’s mattresses, dead animals, it’s abominable.

“It’s awful, we are living in squalor.”

She told Liverpool Echo people should have more respect for where they live.

Roxy continued: “There’s no reason for you not to put it in the bin. It’s not hygienic, people have kids.

“People go on about Covid can kill, but we have rats and plague water down our street.”

According to Freedom of Information data, for 2021 and 2022 to date, two successful prosecutions for fly-tipping were made by Liverpool City Council.

The problem also blights the Norris Green part of the city, about five miles from Wavertree.

One woman in Norris Green caught a group of fly-tippers red-handed as they dumped “at least 12 mattresses” onto the side of a road. She said: “It infuriated me because dumping wooden items for a bonfire is one thing but mattresses give off toxic fumes”.

Freedom of Information data has revealed that for the council to remove fly-tipped waste, it costs around £780,000 annually.

The FOI data also showed that in 2022, from January to October, a total of 14,949 fly-tipping reports were made to Liverpool city council. This was compared to 12,950 in 2021. In terms of fines, in 2020, a total of 21 fines were issued in Liverpool as a result of fly-tipping. This was compared to 15 in 2021 and 15 in 2022 from January to November.

Joanne Anderson, Mayor of Liverpool, who is also the Cabinet lead for Waste Management in the city, previously said: “We’re serious about tackling fly-tipping here in Liverpool and that’s why we have launched our new campaign to ensure we are making our neighbourhoods cleaner.

“Fly-tipping and other types of waste crime ruin our neighbourhoods and environment, and everyone has a responsibility to ensure that waste is disposed of legally and safely. This means making sure that anyone who is handling your waste is licensed to do so, it is also important you know where your waste will end up, otherwise you run the risk of receiving a £400 fine or even in some cases, legal action.

“To support phase two of our campaign, we are in the process of recruiting five new enforcement officers to provide additional support in tackling the issue and significantly reducing the number of fly-tipping incidents in our city.”

Speaking previously regarding flytipping, a spokesperson for the council said: “The council has invested in a new generation of CCTV at a number of hotspots and as a result is currently investigating 40 incidents, of which the offenders in half of these are in the process of being fined.

“We also have an enforcement team operating three days a week checking these streets and the wider area and we would again encourage any residents to liaise with our community wardens or report any incidents online.”

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