The city council's great wheelie bin giveaway has proved a runaway success.

Yesterday, the authority announced it was handing out 1,000 red-lidded recycling containers on a first come first served basis.

Contractor Serco's hot line was flooded with requests and in less than 24 hours they were all allocated and will be delivered to homes over the next week.

The bins, worth £44, are for paper and cardboard and were only available to those who do not currently have a red-lidded one.

The 180-litre containers are being paid for using deductions from contract payments made by the council to Serco as result of the contractor's failure to hit performance targets on the bin collection service.

Council spokesman Rob Davies said: "We expected them to go like hot cakes and they did."