WORK on clearing street gulleys of debris and litter is an ongoing task and intended to fill in the gaps left through council cutbacks, a meeting heard tonight.

Bradford Trident Community Council members told residents at an informal annual general meeting at Bowling Old Lane Cricket Club that clearing up the area was a high priority and because the government had cut council funding so much, things like gulley cleaning was going to occur less often and not at all in back streets and away from main roads.

Chairman Nasreen Khan said: "We are trying to help clear the gulleys before the leaves fall to help Bradford Council. It is not their fault because money has been cut from central government.

"We identify blocked gullies in wards and get and a private contractor to come and clean them.

"Residents have been complaining about them and say they are where their children play," she said.

The problem was exacerbated with litter being discarded or coming from overflowing bins.

Other topics discussed included this increase in litter and fly-tipping.

West Bowling was an area identified an requiring a clean-up operation, possibly encouraging residents to help and keep the area cleaner afterwards.

Zenbir Athtar, a new councillor covering Ripley ward, said stopping littering and fly-tipping would be helped by education.

"It will take time but we want to educate people," he said.

A resident said he thought some of the problems stemmed from areas where Eastern European people lived and they let their bins overflow and left lots of bags of rubbish near his garage.

"They do not seem to understand," he said. "People need to learn to take a pride in their own areas. I clean up around

Ms Khan said Trident was going to print a multi lingual leaflet to explain to people the principles of recycling and how to do it and explain that it was not Bradford Council's responsibility to clear up after them.

She said a meeting was to be arranged with ward councillors to identify the worst areas for this and for fly-tipping and see what could be done to help stop it.

She said this year had been very productive with many achievements to be proud of including raising concerns of drug activity and anti social behaviour with the Neighbourhood Policing Team, challenging Yorkshire Water's "extortionate" water rates, tackling illegal tobacco suppliers through mystery shopping in liaison with the police, presenting financial support to 33 local groups through a small grants scheme and teaming up with Yorkshire Building Society to clean up and improve the woodland in the Parkside ward, including gravel paths.