COUNCIL taxpayers in Wychavon are forking out almost £1 million a year to clean up after litter louts.

Main streets throughout the Vale are cleaned nightly in a bid to stem the tide of fast food cartons, cigarette packets and other rubbish thrown away in the street.

Wychavon District Council waste management officer Mark Edwards said the council spends £950,000 on street cleaning each year to reflect the fact that it aspires to "an excellent service" rather than the extent of the problem.

The sum was revealed after a survey showed that litterbugs were leaving the West Midlands region with an annual litter bill of around £32m.

The fourth Local Environment Quality Survey of England (LEQSE) revealed that more than three quarters of the 12,000 sites surveyed nationally were strewn with cigarette butts, drinks litter has risen by 65 per cent and fast food litter by 450 per cent since 2001.

The study was carried out by Keep Britain Tidy and funded by the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Mark Vickerstaff, regional director of Keep Britain Tidy, said: "Back in 2001 even good citizens admitted to dropping rubbish, while problems such as graffiti and dog fouling were causing real concern to residents.

"Thankfully, campaigns and education messages have changed all that and we are seeing small improvements in our local environment.

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"However, there remains a hardcore group that are utterly determined to raise two fingers to the rest of us.

"Fines and sanctions are clearly the only language these people understand - and if they refuse to ditch their dirty habits, that's exactly what they are going to get."

Mr Edwards said: "It does cost more in the Wychavon area, but if we want to keep places like Evesham and Pershore clean we have to have people cleaning it every day.

"Refuse collectors pick litter every night throughout the Vale and collect all rubbish off the main roads and in the surrounding area once a fortnight.

"We are doing this to achieve an excellent standard.

"The town centre can suffer because of all the litter that is dropped by people coming out of fast food places, but we clean the area every day."