BINMEN in a Hampshire borough are to get extra colleagues in an emergency bid to stop them having to lug around too much rubbish.

Fareham Borough Council will spend an extra £60,000 on more staff to ensure its workers don't have to lift more than an average of five tons of garden waste a day.

Funding for the short-term measure of boosting numbers on busy rounds, which was agreed at last night's Executive meeting, will come from existing budgets.

It comes after a council report found its binmen were regularly carrying as much as ten tons of rubbish on their daily rounds.

In the long-term the council is looking at reducing the size of refuse sacks or introducing trolleys to carry bags as a way of solving the problem, which came to light after complaints from collectors they were carrying too much.