A member of Ottery Dogs has hit back at the removal of the dog bins in the town and set up her own instead.

After the group failed to pay the costs of emptying the three bins for the year to East Devon District Council, leaving Ottery Town Council to foot the bill, they were taken away at the start of this month.

But Sandra Chapman, a self-confessed responsible dog-owner, said there should have been discussions before the decision was made to remove them. She said: “We couldn’t find the sponsorship we had previously to pay for the bins to be emptied and what we wanted was the transferral of the bins from EDDC to Ottery Dogs, but there wasn’t a conversation.”

Sandra has installed a bin and bin bags on Millennium Green, the former site of one of the dog bins which Ottery Dogs lobbied for several years ago, and has been emptying it along with other dog-owners from the town. She thinks politics between the Town Council and the group has got in the way of their aim, to keep Ottery clean.

But councillors were angry at Ottery Dogs for reneging on their commitment to find the �720 it promised to pay to them each year and the lack of communication, leaving them to pick up the hefty cost.