HAPPY ISLAND residents have joined forces to protest about dog mess on a popular Bridport footpath.

Nepheli Theophanidis, 30, helped organise a dog mess‘flagging’ event on Saturday to highlight the problem and said: “I got a dog about six months ago and started walking down there a lot.

“I know it was an issue before but now it’s disgusting, people just aren’t picking up their dogs’ poo.

“I was talking to my friends about it, one of them was walking with her young son and even he stepped in it.”

Ms Theophanidis said she doesn’t want to ‘blame’ dog owners, and argued there should be more facilities to enable the minority who don’t pick up the mess to look after the area responsibly.

She said: “I wrote to the town council and said there are no bins, so there’s no incentive for people to clean up after their dogs.

“They said they had passed it onto their dog warden but they haven’t really done anything about it.”

“We decided to do the event because we thought it was a way to draw attention to it and make people realise just how much poo there is.”

Asked what the group hoped to achieve from the tagging event, Ms Theophanidis said he hope the flagging event would prompt a thorough clean up of the area.

He added: “There also need to be more patrols by dog wardens so that people know if they don’t pick up their dog’s poo, they will get fined.”

Bridport Town Council, West Dorset District Council and the Dorset Waste Partnership all denied having responsibility for the maintenance of dog bins in the area.

Graham Duggan, head of community protection for the district council, said: “We are not in a financial position to supply additional bins and only replace ones that are broken, but sometimes we can re-site bins to make most use of them.

“As we have only received one dog fouling report for this area in the last three years, it doesn’t warrant increasing the number of patrols, but we will keep it under observation.

“We all need to work together to change the behaviour of those owners who allow their dogs to foul...this will greatly assist us as it is impossible to patrol everywhere all the time with the limited resources at the council’s disposal.”

A Dorset Waste Partnership spokesman said: “We do not provide dedicated dog waste bins, which would be the responsibility of Bridport Town Council."

“We would encourage dog-walkers to put bagged dog waste in the nearest general litter bin, which are emptied regularly.”

It is now understood dog poo bins are to be donated by the Co-op, Bredy Vets and Travis Perkins and will be installed and maintained by Bridport Town Council.

The flagging event is from 12 to 2pm by the bridge in the field behind Bridport’s Co-operative supermarket.