Streets littered with bin bags create stink at Henley regatta

HENLEY ROYAL REGATTA, one of the society events of the season, risks being blighted by overflowing bin bags, residents are warning.

Visitors to the regatta, which began yesterday and runs through the weekend, are seeing – and smelling – rubbish left out in the streets every night.

Henley’s mayor said she had seen bags building up. “It smells awful,” said Kellie Hinton. “It looks awful and if it carries on it is going to be a huge issue in very prominent public places.”

Lorraine Hillier, her deputy, added: “We don’t want the town to look a mess for visitors. We want it to look beautiful.” Residents claim that confusion over rubbish collecting will put visitors off returning, with trade waste in blue bags being left out overnight.

More than 200,000 people are due to visit the regatta on the Thames, followed next week by the five-day Henley Festival. Councillor Stefan Gawrysiak, who represents the Henley Residents’ Group on South Oxfordshire District Council, said waste contractors had stopped the 5pm collections of trade rubbish, which he helped introduce.

“We can’t have rubbish being put out at 5pm and it not being collected until the next morning,” he said. “You can go out for a nice meal in the evening and have to look at bags of rubbish.”

A spokesman for the district council said: “We are not aware of any problems with the frequency of litter bin emptying in Henley. Our street cleaner empties the bins we are responsible for daily and more frequently if required. There have been incidents where bags of household waste have been left by litter bins. We have added signs where this is a problem and have written to people we believe are responsible.”