A LEAKING sewer pipe is causing a stink for the owner of a Huddersfield fancy dress hire shop.
Sewage has been running through the cellar of The Stage Door, Trinity Street, for the past eight days.
Geoffrey Chapman keeps about 150 outfits in the cellar, and all have been impregnated with the smell.
Window shoppers wince at the stink, which can be detected outside the shop and in the street.
Mr Chapman, who has run the shop for 20 years, said: "It has been eight days since I reported the matter to Kirklees Council.
"Environmental health inspectors came out and looked at the pipe and said it was a leaking joint.
"I was told that a specialist firm would come to re-line the pipe.
"They were going to call earlier this week but have not done so far.
"The sewage is not damaging the costumes - it is just that they are going to stink and I will have to re-launder them all, which is going to cost me over £350 alone.
"I have heard people outside looking in and saying `It stinks in there'.
"If it was a cafe the council would shut me down straight away."
A spokesman from Kirklees Council said: "Mr Chapman has had prompt action from the council to check out his complaint about the sewer. On September 2 we spoke to him at teatime and explained the situation. He seemed to be OK with what he had been told.
"He seemed to understand that we could not have foreseen this happening and that we would have to wait for the contractors to go on site.
"The contractor is a specialist company of which there are very few in the North of England."
The spokesman said the contractor was due to start work this morning, the earliest time and date available.
