Nearly every weekend, especially brilliantly hot holiday ones, sees the bottle banks by Tesco filling and then overflowing. It seems that having brought their bottles to the bank, some folk are reluctant to take them home again even when they see the bins are full, and dump them there anyway leaving an unsightly and even dangerous mess.

Rather than arrange for even more skips to be made available, Central Bedfordshire Council (CBC), at the request of Fairfield Parish Council, has organised for the existing ones to be emptied twice weekly, every Friday and Monday. The situation will be monitored, but it is hoped that this will alleviate the problems. Maybe when the weather breaks we’ll be drinking less anyway!

As well as more frequent collections, CBC agreed to give us newer, cleaner skips; the current ones were very old and filthy.