A VACUUM cleaner, a brown leather sofa and a suitcase are among the items ditched along a narrow road.

Fly-tippers have also left bin bags, carpets, tiles and other assorted rubbish strewn along Slack Fold Lane.

The lane, which is known as a fly-tipping blackspot, is being used more heavily by motorists attempting to avoid congestion following the closure of Moses Gate bridge.

John Robinson, from New Bury, in Farnworth, said he had encountered problems on the lane while driving to the town centre.

He said: “People are fly-tipping down there. There’s a three-piece suite and a lot of blue boxes that have been dumped.

“You get to these little verges to pull into when a car is oncoming it can drive past you. But you can’t pull in because they have been fly-tipping there.”

The 32-year-old builder added: “One car had to reverse the whole way to the other end, because I said I wasn’t pulling in and scratching my car in the bushes.

“I wasn’t going to move there was another car behind me and a police car behind that one.”

Kathleen Black, from Great Lever, also saw happened upon the catalogue of dumped items while she was out exercising - and returned to take some snaps.

She said: “I’ve went out for a run and it was all the way along the lane. I couldn’t resist taking a photograph and went back on my bike.

“It’s a hotspot fro fly-tipping, there’s no doubt about it, even the poor farmer ends up with it chucked over his fence.

“There was a vacuum cleaner, car seats, bags of stuff, a slim bin —and he massive one, which is the sofa.”

And the 68-year-old pensioner hit out at the fly-tippers for not disposing of their waste properly. I run along there quite often and it really bugs me,” she said.

“They should really be taken to task about it.

“I can’t understand the mentality of people who do it.

“They have had to take the trouble to drive there when there’s a tip less than three miles away—they’ve probably done more than three miles to get there.

It’s the mentality that they can’t be bothered to an official site and have driven there.”

Ms Black said that she had reported instances of fly-tipping in the past, but the problem soon returns once it has been cleaned up.

“It is bad place for it, no doubt about it, no sooner have they moved it than it gets dumped again.”

A spokesperson for Bolton Council said: “Flytipping is disgusting and antisocial and we will continue to pursue flytippers and those who commit envirocrimes which blight our neighbourhoods.

"We clean Slackfold Lane on a regular basis, but as it is a narrow road, we must close the road completely in order to do this.

"We have a full clean and removal of any items planned in two weeks.”