A FURNESS resident was left ‘gobsmacked’ after she discovered her local recycling point had been removed.

Sheena Bradley, who has lived in Backbarrow for the past 40 years, went to drop off some cardboard at the facility last week.

However, she was shocked to find that the facility was no longer there.

“It’s such a well used facility,” she said. “And it’s just been withdrawn with no notification. It was always full up because it serves quite an area and it’s just been taken away. I do not have a car and I do not think Stagecoach would want me bringing smelly waste on the bus.”

She said that ‘no consideration’ had been given to elderly people who were unable to travel to the Ulverston recycling site and noted that the site was ‘already being used by fly-tippers’.

“There’s going to be a lot more fly-tipping or people will just put it in their grey bin,” she said.

Sheena added that she had seen quite a lot of ‘deterioration in the services’ over her time in the village.

“There’s a whole army of us going out picking up litter and dog poo, trimming hedges,” she said. “If it was not for the people in the village cleaning up then I hate to think what the village would be like.”

A spokesperson for South Lakeland District Council (SLDC) explained that the recycling centre at Backbarrow was one of a small number of sites which had been removed due to the ‘successful expansion’ of kerbside recycling.

“Local parish councils in the areas affected were informed well in advance,” they said. “All residents in South Lakeland now have access to kerbside recycling and we will collect additional materials from the kerbside if placed out for collection at the time of the normal recycling collection. As a result of this we have seen a significant reduction in the amount of material households take to recycling centres.”

They added that SLDC’s investment in expanded kerbside recycling collections was a response to residents’ wishes and they had received no reports of fly-tipping at the Backbarrow site.