See nightmare potholes and revolting rubbish in Bexley that leave mum wanting to move away

Parkside Road sits in Belvedere, running alongside Frank’s Park and several residential roads.

Serife Mehmet, 30, has lived off Parkside Road for 15 years and said fewer bin collections from the council has contributed to more littering in the area. She said she feels potholes on the street have gotten much worse in recent years and make cars filthy when it rains.

She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “The car at the moment looks like it’s been on a farm… I think we’re just so used to it but we get families that don’t want to come to our house because they don’t want to park up and ruin their car, which is totally understandable.”

The mum said she regularly sees mattresses, furniture and bin bags strewn across the road. When the LDRS visited Parkside Road, items including discarded supermarket baskets, an abandoned domestic dust bin and car parts were present. Ms Mehmet claimed residents in the area appear to care less about keeping the streets clean, with dog fouling also becoming more prevalent.

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She said: “I see foxes. They go into the bins because the lids are open when they fill up. They are taking all the rubbish and it’s everywhere.”

She added: “I have wanted to move many a time, I can’t be bothered anymore around here… I am out picking up people’s rubbish and I shouldn’t have to but I can’t live like that.”

A Bexley Council spokesperson told the LDRS last month that 264 fines had been issued for fly-tipping in Belvedere so far this year. They added that the authority’s cleansing teams had conducted 32 visits to Parkside Road in the past 12 months. Sarah Akin, 23, has lived beside the street her whole life.

Ms Akin told the LDRS: “It got a lot worse three years ago. Even in the alleyway near my house, people have just started throwing stuff because I think that they know that they won’t get punished for it.”

The local said she suspects businesses from further afar may be dumping waste in the area, including food. She said this attracts rats and foxes from the nearby park to the homes of residents.

She said: “It affects my mum a lot because she doesn’t like dirt. It attracts rodents and other animals because we live near a park, sometimes they get into the garden. It’s not nice to live with.”

A Bexley Council spokesperson told the LDRS that the authority would explore removing fly-tipped items in back alleyways if the waste was accessible and the contents met the council’s threshold for involvement. They added that investigations would be undertaken if the identity of the offenders was known.

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Paul Chandler, 54, said potholes and fly-tipping have been an issue on the road for as long as he can remember. He said that he and other neighbours take it upon themselves to fill in the deep holes on the road with rubble and bricks. He added that cars have been left abandoned on the road on several occasions, with one being set on fire four months ago.

Mr Chandler told the LDRS: “It’s a nightmare… We get fly-tips regularly along here. We had a car fire go up, that’s why the fence got burnt.”

He added: “We pay to get our rubbish collected. We end up having to pay for fly-tipped items to get picked up as well.”

The local said he pays £250 as often as every three months to have discarded waste on the street collected. He said that when raising the issue with Bexley Council, he has been told the road is not the authority’s responsibility.

A Bexley Council spokesperson told the LDRS that Parkside Road has no registered ownership, meaning maintenance and clearance of waste from the area is at the discretion of residents. However, they said the authority’s environmental services team would continue to remove hazardous or dangerous waste from the road as quickly as practicable once informed.

They said the authority would also inspect such waste to investigate who was responsible. They added that the authority was not aware of any missed bin collections on residential streets connected to Parkside Road but would investigate the residents’ concerns.

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The spokesperson said: “Officers have also offered to arrange a site visit with residents in the first instance and discuss the option of improving the current fly-tipping signage. The council will be happy to investigate any potential CCTV evidence provided by residents or interview any witnesses which will help them identify and prosecute offenders.”

They added: “If vehicles are found to have been abandoned on this land, we will continue to work in partnership with the DVLA and Metropolitan Police to locate the owners or facilitate removal.”

The council spokesperson said that Parkside Road is an unadopted road, meaning it is not publicly owned or maintained by the highways authority. Adopting the road would reportedly require the authority to install road drainage, resurface the street, add signage and street lighting as well as maintaining such assets alongside regular street cleaning.

They said: “The council will not be exploring the option to adopt this road. This is because there is no budget to cover the cost of the adoption of the road and all associated responsibilities resulting from a road being adopted… The cost associated with the road adoption would have to be met by the Bexley taxpayer and the council’s view is that adopting the road would not solve the fly-tipping issues.”