THE bank holiday weekend started off being rubbish for one Bromham woman after she accidentally binned her mobile phone without realising she had done it.

By the time Lesley Seed, of Chittoe Heath, noticed her phone was missing on Monday, the bin had already been emptied and its contents were on the back of a bin lorry on its way to the

disposal site at Lower Compton, near Calne.

“I was distraught as my mobile phone contained all my family photographs,” she said.

“Luckily I had installed an app on my phone which helps to locate it. We called the Lower Compton site and the helpful staff there were able to isolate the area where the bin lorry had tipped its load and we set off to begin the search.”

Joined by her husband Councillor Jonathan Seed, the portfolio holder for flooding and military covenant, and her daughter Libby, the trio donned protective clothing and worked with Hills and their trusty digger machine to locate the phone, which surprisingly only had a broken screen.

Dave Smith, landfill site foreman for Hills Waste Solutions, said: “The fact that Mrs Seed called us so quickly once she realised the phone had gone missing enabled us to identify the lorry and the area where the load of rubbish had been tipped.

“If it was any later, there is a good chance that the phone would have been on its way to

either Slough or Westbury where Wiltshire’s waste is sent for conversion into electricity or fuel for energy.”