A GREEN Party councillor is calling for a set of "written standards" to be agreed on street cleaning, hedge cutting and bin collections in Worcester.

Councillor Louis Stephen insists the idea will help ease concern standards could slip in the drive to save cash.

As the Worcester News has revealed in recent weeks, the city council needs to save more than £2.2 million by 2019 and has asked departments to come up with new ideas.

Twenty-five jobs are at risk, although bosses say natural turnover and voluntary redundancies should account for it.

But key environmental services are under review, including litter bins, where some streets with two could have them replaced by one larger one.

The council also wants to collect some bins less frequently, saying they can use new technology which alerts staff when they are full.

Cllr Stephen said: "A lot of people will be concerned about a slipping of standards.

"I'd like to propose that we have a set of written standards for our services, so everyone knows what service they can expect.

"As we go forward, it's imperative we have something that safeguards the needs of residents and drives productivity and quality."

He says his concern was prompted by an approach from a resident in Battenhall who said his hedge had only been cut properly on one side.

After approaching the council he said it became apparent there was no set standard, leaving it impossible to be sure if a good job had been done.

He raised his concerns during a meeting of the performance, budget and scrutiny committee at the Guildhall, saying the services are crucial.

He said the so-called 'Service Level Agreements' could be rolled out across the council.

During the debate Councillor Simon Geraghty pushed for an old 'service standards blueprint' over bin collections to be published for a fresh debate.

The standards were meant to form part of an old Tory bid to get the private sector to collect bins, before the idea was axed by the current Labour leadership.

Cllr Geraghty said: "There were very clear standards as result of that outsourcing project - clear, minimum standards.

"Publishing those standards we would have achieved through the outsourcing of cleaner and greener (a council department) would be a very good thing."

Councillor Adrian Gregson, the city's Labour leader, told him there was a difference between "set standards, and a proposed set of standards", and defended his party's move to "stop the privatisation of the service."