Enfield Council has blamed a spate of missed refuse collections on parked cars blocking access for waste crews.

Christine Vincent, who lives in Mandeville Road, Enfield Lock, says she has been battling since September last year to get regular bin collections in her street.

Ms Vincent said she had repeatedly lodged complaints with the council, but the problem – affecting blue, green, brown and black bins – kept happening.

Sometimes the collections are missed altogether, while at other times collection crews turn up on different days, she added.

Ms Vincent said the problem affects homes at 1-26 Mandeville Road, as well as houses and flats in nearby Newport Close.

She said: “Why should the 100 or so houses and flats suffer missed collections every week? We pay our council tax the same as everyone else.

“I am extremely frustrated with this problem, especially as we now have to pay for our green bin collection on top of our council tax, which I thought included collection of household waste anyway.

“When we go over to fortnightly collections, it may be that we only get our black bin collected once a month.”

Ms Vincent claimed she had been told some refuse wagons were too wide to access her part of the road.

But she pointed out the council could solve the problem by sending smaller lorries instead.

An Enfield Council spokesperson said collections had been missed because crews had been prevented from accessing the road.

The spokesperson said: “We appreciate it is frustrating for residents when their bins are not collected, in the case of Mandeville Road, at times our crews have been prevented from accessing the roads because of parking, often repeated behaviour.

“When this happens, we revisit the street on a regular basis until bins can be collected.

“We are conducting an operational review, which will be completed in the near future to look at ways of improving access to this road so that bin collections can be done without interruption.

“In the meantime, we would like to thank residents for their forbearance and patience.”