A Temple Street resident says a change to his bin collection will cause a danger to pedestrians and traffic.

John Weaver is also angry with the way the district council have treated him after a request to put his rubbish outside the front of his house, instead of the service alley behind the terraced properties.

He received a letter from East Devon District Council (EDDC) which said a Waste Management officer had visited the area, and ‘based on their findings it has been necessary to review the collection point for your property’.

When Mr Weaver rang to argue for keeping the collection to the back of his house, he was told by the officer ‘it is not what the council can do for you, but what you can do for you council’.

The 48-year-old, who is a cut-throat barber, said he was disappointed with the attitude of EDDC, and said its compromise of providing refuse sacks to put outside the front of his house wasn’t good enough.

Mr Weaver said: “There isn’t room outside the front of my property to put a bin without blocking my fire escape route, and putting it on the pavement would cause a danger to pedestrians and road-users.”

He said the council had continued to collect his and other residents’ rubbish from the back of the houses after a similar proposal in 2009, and said the change would go against its own policy of keeping refuse out of sight in tourist towns like Sidmouth.

“So if everyone had bags of rubbish in front of the house on a main road like Temple Street that wouldn’t look very good, would it?” he asked.

But a spokesman for EDDC said the collections are being moved to the front because of complaints from residents about rubbish being dumped to the rear of properties.

She explained: “At no time were our contractors instructed to collect rubbish from the rear of these properties, and once we realised the mistake, we wrote to those residents who were affected (house numbers 109 – 117) to explain that we were bringing them in line with everyone else in the street.”