A PENSIONER decided to take direct action when Trafford Council failed to clean a dangerous pavement near his home.

Seventy-two year-old George Officer, of Charlton Drive, contacted the council after his wife, Nadine, slipped and almost fell on wet leaves on Northenden Road.

But he was told that the company contracted to deal with leaves did not start work until later in October.

George decided he would do their job for them and swept up the leaves himself, helped by his neighbour Bill Burgess.

George said: "The pavement was very dangerous. The leaves were near the bus stop, which is used by a lot of elderly people.

"I rang up the council to tell them about it, but nothing was done. My wife slipped on the leaves and she was very upset about it.

"The council is lucky it's not facing an injury claim, but they just told me the contract didn't start until October 22.

"When I realised nothing was going to be done about it, I decided to clean it up myself. It's all very silly. It would cost them less to clean up the leaves than to deal with a compensation claim."

But Trafford's head of environmental services, Geoff Marsh, said: "One of the difficulties with leaf clearance is you never know how the season is going to pan out.

"If you take on these teams too early, you could end up paying for them to do nothing, so we tend to take them on later rather than sooner.

"If there is a problem somewhere, we try our best to investigate it. But even a small number of leaves can cause people to slip, and we can't keep pavements free of leaves all the time.

"Some roads have different types of trees which drop leaves at different times, so we can clear up a road one day and it can be covered in leaves again a couple of days later."