A SMALL garden recycling service was left with a weighty problem after discovering a wood chipper due to arrive from Newcastle today was too heavy to be lifted from a flatbed truck by borough council lifting equipment.

Anne Billingham, the secretary of Leaves, was forced to make a flurry of calls for help. Richard Freeth Recycling, which lifts bottle banks in the town, offered to unload the £4,500 piece of equipment.

"I was beginning to think: 'How on earth were we going to manage,'" Anne said. "For someone to come all that way and not be able to take it off the vehicle would be awful."

The one-and-a-half ton machine, is expected in Swindon later today. No one at the group, which provides recycling and composting services for elderly people, realised it was so heavy until yesterday.