A pensioner is “fed up” with a lack of action from Barnet Council over a “scrap yard” that has appeared next to his home.

Martyn Woolf, of West Heath Road, Childs Hill, has pleaded with the authority to do something about the unsightly mess outside an empty property next to his home.

The 80-year-old is forced to put up with a rubbish tip including broken toilets, old refrigerators, wheel barrows and ladders in front of the small, detached three-bedroom house.

The house is due to be demolished within the next three years to make way for two maisonettes but Barnet Council says it can do nothing about the mess in the mean time.

The retired commodity dealer said: “Every day, more arrives – it is horrendous. Yesterday I applied to the council to have my council tax re-banded because we’re living next to a scrap yard.

“Every day is another aggravation. I see that van loading the rubbish onto this big pit at least once a day.”

Barnet Council says it has no power to remove the dump from the private land as there are no rodent problems or environmental health issues.

Planning officers have contacted the site owner asking him to follow through on certain planning conditions, but it is not thought he will be made to remove the refuse. 

Mr Woolf, who has lived in the road for more than 20 years with his partner Vivienne, said: “The fact the council is only going to review it is just another example of the authority’s inactivity.

“I’m very angry about what has gone on. There has been a development going on within 100 yards of my house for at least the last 12 years.

“It has been one big building site for so long, it feels like the road is a warehouse for construction lorries.”