Pauline Ellis is fed up with Bradford Council after being plagued with smelly drains for almost a decade.

Over the last nine years, Council workmen have made numerous searches for the source of the problem near her home in Romsey Gardens, Holme Wood.

But Mrs Ellis wants to know why it took the authority so long to finally locate it to a buried manhole in her own garden.

She said she has lost count of the times workers have spent hours unblocking drains in the area.

Finally, engineers scanned the surrounding area using a high-tech camera and found a manhole cover buried three feet down in her own garden.

A Council spokesman said: "After investigating numerous sewerage problems in the area we discovered this was the major cause."

But, though the smells have been resolved for now, Mrs Ellis is angry that the manhole has now been raised and left in her garden.

"I've had problems with the sewers for such a long time that if the Council have to come again they will have to dig up my fence to get to the manhole and I am not happy about it," she said.

She added when the workers came to fix the sewer, they left her garden in a mess.

"The next thing I knew there was a manhole in my garden. No one told me it was going to be there.

"The place was just an eyesore when they left it. They did not have any permission to come in and do this.

"My husband spends a lot of time in the garden and we like it to look nice. What's going to happen if the drains need fixing again? They can't just keep taking my fence away and putting it back."

The Council spokesman said the authority has a public health duty to ensure defective sewers are repaired.

He added: "We do have a legal right to access such properties to carry out such work.

"The problem has now been solved and our drainage experts feel they would recur if the cover was buried again.

"We do intend to go back and do re-instatement works in the garden and have discussed this with Mr and Mrs Ellis."

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