The war on litter louts was stepped up this week as Bradford Council submitted a bid to help keep the city's streets free of chewing gum.

Cleansing bosses at the council have applied to the government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for a grant towards new initiatives to prevent gum blighting the city's streets.

The grant, which could be as high as £60,000, would help to pay for special gum bins and more cleaning equipment.

Damien Fisher, head of the council's visible service team, said: "Chewing gum is a major problem in Bradford. It looks absolutely horrible and is extremely difficult to clean, taking up a lot of time and at a very high cost.

"Even when we do clean it up it has an adverse affect as it makes the areas that have not been cleaned look twice as worse. By providing more bins and punishing offenders we can begin to cut back on this problem."

Earlier this month, a street-by-street clean-up to remove gum from the city centre's pavements began along Bank Street. Councillor Simon Cooke, executive member for regeneration, joined with council workers to use high powered steam jets to remove the gum which costs the Council more than £14,000 a year to remove.

The campaign to keep the streets free from gum is about to take on extra significance as the city's regeneration begins to get underway in earnest.

The area surrounding Rawson Place is soon to become pedestrianised and new paving and public art features will be installed around the Kirkgate, Godwin Street and the Oastler Centre. And city centre bosses want to make sure that Bradford's new streets are kept in a gum-free state.

The 13-strong enforcement team, set up in January last year, patrol the streets of Bradford and can slap fixed penalty notices of £50 on people they see dropping chewing gum or any other litter onto the streets.

Bradford Council is also considering joining a growing number of local authorities calling for gum manufacturers to pay towards the cost of the clean-up. Some London authorities have started the ball rolling by suggesting banding together to target UK chewing gum manufacturer Wrigley to contribute to the ever-growing cost of cleaning up used gum from pavements.

Wrigley UK produces 90 per cent of the UK's chewing gum and around 900 million packs per year.

One stick of chewing gum only costs three pence to produce but costs ten pence to remove from the streets, at a national cost per year to the council tax payer of £150 million.