OUTRAGED Trowbridge residents expressed their horror that drug needles had been left near John of Gaunt School.

An admin for the Spotted in Trowbridge Facebook page found several at the top of the alleyway at Pitman Avenue by the school on Wednesday night (September 5).

They wrote a Facebook post criticising Wiltshire Council’s out-of-hours team, as despite lodging it with them not long after 8.30pm that night, it wasn’t picked up until the next morning, by which time schoolchildren would have walked past the needles.

“We were informed someone would attend “as soon as possible” to clean this away and acknowledged it was a possible danger to other people and noted the location provided was directly next to a school entrance,” posted the admin.

“As we post this, children are walking directly past (hopefully not on) those needles as they enter their school.

“How long is “As soon as possible” and just how important, is the safety and wellbeing of the people, to you?”

Blanche Martin posted on the post: “What has this world come to?

“As for the council ... as I said, what has this world come to, not to put children first. That’s disgraceful.”

Lauren Ireland commented: “These people who wish to pick these things up as they find them risk- HIV, Hepatitis B (and) Hepatitis C.

“These carry life-long health complications and treatments.”

A council spokesman said: “The items have been recovered by our clean-up teams and we are carrying out further investigation.”

John of Gaunt School declined to comment.