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A CONSERVATION volunteer has criticised supermarket firm Tesco for not collecting trolleys littering the town more than a week after being reported.

Ten days after volunteers fished out four trolleys from the River Ock, Abingdon, Tesco has still not removed them. And in the meantime two of the trolleys have been thrown back into the water.

Eleanor Dangerfield, of Masefield Crescent, Abingdon, was one of 140 volunteers from local churches who spent the weekend litter-picking in hot-spots across the town.

The volunteers used a hook and rope to pull out the metal trolleys from the river, which runs along Ock Walk.

Mrs Dangerfield, 60, reported this to Tesco the next day, asking the company to remove the trolleys from the path.

When they were still there after five days, Mrs Dangerfield became so frustrated that she pushed one of the four trolleys back to the superstore in Marcham Road.

She said: "The reaction of the staff, when a dirty trolley covered in dried-up water weed was wheeled into the store was rather like that of chickens when a fox gets into the hen coop.

"The man in charge of the car park was summoned. He told me that Tesco has a van going around Oxfordshire picking up stray trolleys and the ones I had reported had been logged.

"Needless to say, by the next morning, two of the remaining trolleys were back in the river again."

The trolleys have still not been picked up nine days later, with two of them still remaining in the river.

Mrs Dangerfield said: "It's very dispiriting. You get treated a bit like a criminal for wheeling one to the store, as if you put it there yourself, and you never get any thanks for bringing one back or doing their job for them.

"Where I live we are getting really fed up about abandoned trolleys around here and the ones that are dumped in the Ock."

She added: "While the blame for trolleys littering footpaths and in the river is with the people who put them there, it is Tesco's responsibility to keep them on site.

"There are ways of doing this.

"Stray trolleys are not only an eyesore, but in the river they contribute to flooding.

"When is this arrogant behemoth of a store going to show some responsibility for the surrounding area where its customers live?"

Adam Fisher, spokesman for Tesco, admitted that in some other stores magnetic strips and coin-operated trolleys were used as a way to prevent them leaving the car parks, but called these a "last resort".

He said: "Trolleys cannot be retrieved immediately, unfortunately, as we tend to get contractors out to collect them.

"I don't know how long it takes specifically, in some cases it can take up to a week or so.

"All we can say is we apologise and we try to collect them as soon as we can.

"It would be really helpful if people kept them in the property and did not take them away."

A spokesman at the Vale of White Horse District Council said the council had no responsibility at all for the clearing of trollies.

He said: "We advise people who find these abandoned trollies to contact the supermarket concerned, just as we do if a complaint comes directly to us."

5:26pm Wednesday 14th May 2008

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