LEGO, toy racing cars, cuddly toys and even Christmas trees – these are just some of the festive items dumped in sewers across York and North Yorkshire over the past fortnight.

A steady flow of Christmas related items has been turning up at Yorkshire Water’s sewage treatment works at Naburn, which treats York’s waste.

Some items, such as the Lego and toy cars, are thought to have been flushed down toilets, but the Christmas trees – with their tinsel decorations often replaced instead by toilet roll – are thought to have been discarded down man-holes as home owners began their tidy-up after Christmas Day.

But a spokesman said one of the biggest problems after Christmas was fat from the turkey and roast potatoes, which some householders poured straight down the kitchen sink.

He said: “Each year, the company clears more than 20,000 blockages from sewers in the region, with 50 per cent of these caused by people wrongly disposing of items like fats, oils and grease down the sink.

“The company has seen a growing trend among a small minority of customers for disposing of their unwanted rubbish via the region’s sewers – with proof of such abuse flowing into the works on a daily basis.”

He said the problems had arisen despite a public information campaign launched last November, aimed at urging customers to dispose of their waste properly, or risk potentially facing the severe – and rather gruesome – consequences that could occur.

Rumesh Chauhan, who is responsible for running a sewage treatment works, said: “People abuse their sewers thinking that someone else will always clean up their mess, but unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.”

Peter Doyne, who is responsible for the management and operation of the Naburn works, said: “Not everybody seems to have got into the seasonal spirit, and we’ve removed a number of Christmas-related items such as trees and small toys as they’ve arrived.

“We’ve definitely noticed an increasing trend in people abusing our sewers. Such behaviour can lead to people’s homes being flooded with sewage, as a result of the blockages caused by items finding their way into sewers which don’t belong there.”