COUNCILLORS will decide next week whether or not to take tougher action against people who leave wheelie bins in the street.
But pensioner Pearl Cox just wishes the council would collect her rubbish in the first place.
Ever since the authority switched to fortnightly black collections last month, Mrs Cox, 68, has faced an uphill battle to get her bins emptied.
Because her housebound husband Stanley, 71, is severely disabled, the couple qualify for assisted bin collections.
That means bin crews should collect their bins from a designated spot in the couple's front garden.
But that all changed last month after the switch to fortnightly collections.
Mrs Cox said: "I would support anything the council does about stopping people leaving their empty bins out in the street because it looks disgusting.
"However, in our case, I would just like our bins emptied on the right day."
Despite having assisted collections for 20 years, Mrs Cox says her overflowing black bin was ignored for three weeks, despite her making six separate complaints.
The bin, together with six bags of extra rubbish, was finally emptied after the Mail intervened.
This week, it happened again, only this time bin crews failed to collect her blue recycling bin from her home in Boulevard, west Hull.
Mrs Cox said: "We have had assisted collections for 20 years, including six years at this address.
"We have never had any problems until they started the new fortnightly collections.
"When they didn't collect the black bin, I took down six different reference numbers after calling up about it – the same as the number of plastic bags I ended up having to dump in my garden.
"When I rang again this week about them missing the blue bin, I was told we weren't on the assisted collection list.
"My husband is severely disabled. He's on a nebuliser and an oxygen tank and, because he is diabetic, has a very specialised diet.
"The last thing we need is this hassle over the bins."
The issue of wheelie bin enforcement is set to be discussed at Monday's council cabinet meeting.
Councillors will be asked to decide whether to take tougher enforcement action against residents who fail to remove emptied bins from the street.
At the moment, the council only issues fixed penalty notices as a last resort and only usually in cases where people repeatedly leave out extra bags of rubbish.
In a report for the cabinet, the council's neighbourhood nuisance team leader Mark Cornall says taking enforcement action over bins cluttering the streets would risk criminalising otherwise law-abiding residents.
He says more advice and information is the answer to increasing public complaints over the issue.
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