Around 100 households across the borough have 30 days to comply with “bring your bin in” notices under a clampdown aimed at de-cluttering pavements and making streets safe.

Around 100 households across the borough have 30 days to comply with “bring your bin in” notices under a clampdown aimed at de-cluttering pavements and making streets safe.

The firm action comes following a string of mishaps and accidents to people and property involving wheelie bins left out at times other than collection day.

But Mark Smith environmental services officer said the council hoped most cases could be resolved with education rather than enforcement, working with households to come up with other options which could include bags or smaller bins.

Under the Dirty Stop Out campaign residents have 30 days to comply with a legal notice or face a possible fixed penalty fine.

Mr Smith said: “Recourse to enforcement is a last resort. If people are having problems storing bins they are asked to let us know. We may be able to make some alterations like supplying smaller bins.”

He stressed that although the problem seemed trivial vandal-target wheelie bins that were not taken in were at best a nuisance and at worst a hazard, causing a difficulty for wheelchair users and buggies trying to negotiate their way around town.

In one incident a mother walking with her three year old child in Northgate Street tripped on a wheel and needed stitches to an injury.

Although it was on the scheduled collection day Mr Smith said it did show how bins could impact on people's lives. Other problems included drunken clubbers knocking in to bins and damaging parked cars.

Wheeled brown rubbish bins look set to roll out across the borough after households responded with a resounding “yes!” to the question “Would you want an additional brown bin?”

Mark Smith said the council had been “overwhelmed” by the response. “We have already passed the quantity of houses that we would require to launch. The responses are coming in faster than we can count them. Of those that have responded 80pc have said yes.”

Mr Smith said Yarmouth was the only district in Norfolk that did not recycle green waste. The Yarmouth scheme will take garden waste and some kitchen scraps like potato peelings and salad, but not cooked left-overs.