Dominic Bareham ACTION looks set to be taken by environmental health officers over rubbish dumped next to a Great Yarmouth pub, which the licensee believes is a breeding ground for rats.

Dominic Bareham

ACTION looks set to be taken by environmental health officers over rubbish dumped next to a Great Yarmouth pub, which the licensee believes is a breeding ground for rats.

Officers from Yarmouth Borough Council's environmental health department are trying to trace a private landlord over the waste which has been sitting in a passageway next to the Coach and Horses in Northgate Street for a couple of months.

Jeremy Marsh, a senior environmental health officer at the council, said officers would ask the landlord to clear the waste or do the work themselves then charge the landlord for the work done.

He said staff in his department received a complaint about the rubbish on Tuesday and there had been one previous complaint earlier this month which had been made to the separate environmental services department.

Jenene McDonald, landlady of the Coach and Horses, said the rubbish consisted of household waste, food and some fly tipped items, including a television.

But she said over the course of time the waste had started to smell and had become infested with flies, and she believed even rats had started to congregate amid the detritus.

She added that she had phoned the council on a number of occasions to get the waste cleared, and environmental health officers had seen the rubbish during a visit to inspect a new smoking shelter at the pub. But nothing had been done to deal with the problem.

“It is the stench. We have the front door open and we get flies coming in as well and we get the problem with rats because food has been dumped there as well,” she said.