A LYME Regis woman has rubbished the "abysmal" council services that allowed a freezer to be dumped at the Cobb and pile up with waste for a week in peak season.

And Mrs Jacki Philips of Coram Avenue says Lyme Regis is dirtier now than she has ever known.

Mrs Philips said: "We pay immense council tax and people are having to climb over rubbish to get to the beach. It's disgusting."

Mrs Philips was walking her dog at 7am a week ago last Tuesday (August 5) on the beach behind the district council buildings and the aquarium on the Cobb.

Propped up against the shelter, facing the beach was an old chest freezer with the top missing.

She walked the dog again on Thursday morning, by which time, "the chest freezer was full to the brim with rubbish, bottles, chip wrappers - you name it. And it must have been there since Wednesday as this was 7am on Thursday."

So Mrs Philips decided to conduct an experiment. She left a plastic bag placed strategically amid the rubbish and decided to come back on Friday to see if it was still there.

When she returned, the bag was in exactly the same spot - the rubbish had not been moved.

"By this time, you didn't have to look at the rubbish," she said. "You could smell it from around the corner. There was so much of it, I had to lift the dog over it just to get past. I was incensed."

Mrs Philips called the district council's West Dorset Services, which said it would inspect the site.

On Sunday when she returned, Mrs Philips found the freezer had been emptied of rubbish, but had not been removed. And now fresh rubbish was piling up again.

"Now families were actually lifting their children over the rubbish to get to the beach. And big bottles of coloured liquid had appeared on the pile as well, so it had now gone beyond just holidaymakers' rubbish.

"I hate to think what the rats were doing and the seagulls think it's a ten-course meal," she said.

Mrs Philips called the district council again on Monday, by which time another resident had complained.

On Tuesday - one week later - it was still there.

On Wednesday afternoon, the district council issued this statement: "Following a call from a member of the public and subsequent investigations by the district council, the person who was responsible for leaving a freezer on the Cobb at Lyme Regis has now removed it at their own cost. The district council is not taking the matter further."

Mrs Philips said the person responsible should be fined and that the council did not do as much street cleaning as it used to.

She said: "They used to tidy up every morning in a van. You don't see that any more. It's abysmal."