A huge pile of rubbish dumped in the middle of a 60mph road could have caused a serious accident, residents say.

Rubbish was left strewn across the middle of Walker Fold Road going into Scout Road in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

One resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said he discovered the flytipping at around 6.30am.

He said: "It's a tip road basically. It seems like people are flytipping on there every day.

"This was in a complete blind spot on top of a hill and could have been very dangerous.

"It's a real problem area for flytipping, the Woodland Trust seem to be there everyday cleaning it up."

In a statement on reporting an unprecedented surge in flytipping since lockdown across its woodland site across the UK, Smithills, which houses the Woodland Trust's Smithills estate, was singled out as an area where there has been "huge litter and anti-social behaviour problems".

The trust has had to spend over £1 million on cleaning up flytipping at its woods over the last seven years.

Horwich North East cllr Kevin McKeon described the latest incident as "terrible".

He said: "It's a great nuisance to the police, council, and residents but it is very difficult to combat.

"It's impossible for the council and police to be everywhere all the time, especially when this happens in the middle of the night.

"It's a problem throughout our borough. A constant issue that we'd all like to have a definitive solution to but on secluded roads it's hard to stop.

"This was a terrible example of it that was very dangerous and is again a minority spoiling it for the majority who deal with their rubbish properly."