Cheshire East has repeated its warning about the dangers of residents dumping batteries in with household waste following a serious fire in a bin lorry on its rounds.

Firefighters were called to the scene on Knight Street in Macclesfield shortly before 10am on Thursday (September 25).

They cooled the contents using a hose reel before the vehicle was moved to a safe area so the fire could be fully extinguished.

At Thursday night's meeting of the environment and communities committee, Chris Allman, director of planning and environment, said while it hadn't been confirmed the blaze had been sparked by discarded batteries, that had been the case for other fires which had happened in the back of bin wagons.

Showing councillors a picture of the fire, he said: "You can see, a significant fire in the back of the RCV (refuse collection vehicle), which actually took all the hydraulics out, which meant we had to get specialist tools across to the site in Macclesfield…

"So, this is just one example of the issues we're facing on a daily basis around what's going into bins.

"Don't know the cause of that at the minute, but we suspect it's probably something to do with batteries and people putting batteries within the waste."

While it hasn't been confirmed the blaze was sparked by discarded batteries, that has been the case for other fires in the back of bin lorries (Credit: Pixabay)

Mr Allman added: "So it's a really important campaign we'll be launching again, around what not to put in your waste, because this has a detrimental impact on the ability for the service to collect it, because that's going to take a vehicle out for a prolonged period of time."

Mr Allman assured councillors that staff had not been injured but he said it was the second fire that had occurred in the back of a bin lorry in the past three weeks.

Used batteries can be disposed of at collection points which are located at most supermarkets or at local household waste and recycling centres.