• THERE is a strip of concrete next to the end of a terrace in Finchley Road about 6ft deep and 20ft long that is separated from the pavement by a few bollards and used by people not resident in the adjacent building to site commercial and residential bins.

The residential bins are uncovered and not big enough to accommodate the rubbish thrown at them, so they are piled high and surrounded on the ground by bags that are broken into every evening by foxes. The area is therefore littered with food waste and attracts rats.

The rubbish also acts as an open invitation to domestic fly-tippers, so the area is usually covered in old furniture, waste timber, sacks of rubble, for-rent signs, and just about anything else people don’t want to bother taking to the dump.

The domestic bins, which belong to a whole terrace of buildings, used to be in the alley behind the Finchley Road buildings, but that alley is reached by some steps that the rubbish collectors have told me were broken and unsafe and they refuse to climb them.

Since the bins were brought down to street level the mess and food waste is even more disgusting. I look out on this from my front windows and walk by it every morning on my way to work.

Is there no regulation that bins must be covered? Is there no regulation requiring rubbish for a whole terrace of flats not be sited in one spot next to the street for days on end? Does the landlord hold no responsibility for hosting a rubbish dump and does the council have no responsibility to intercede?

Where does one go to solve a problem like this? What should I do next? Planting a few sticky bushes and building some cupboards for the bins would solve the problem for good, but this will not happen unless someone with authority tells the landlord.

JANE CLARK
Address supplied