An official report claiming Bradford is one of England's cleaner metropolitan cities was being greeted with derision today.

The city's streets were said to be among the cleanest in the country in the report by the Audit Commission.

But the study into environmental services across the country was rejected by residents, shopkeepers and councillors alike who, despite acknowledging that improvements have been made, say they are still fed up with the area's litter-strewn streets.

The litter problem is so great that it was identified as the top priority in Bradford's 2020 Vision strategy following a huge district-wide consultation exercise.

The report said more than 96 per cent of Bradford's streets were at an acceptable level of cleanliness - eight per cent higher than the average for other similar-sized councils across the rest of the country.

The report stated: "The key finding is that there have been overall improvements in recent years in many of (Bradford's) services. This should be encouraging for the public, as these services affect their quality of life."

But the findings were met with astonishment by Councillor David Ford (Green, Shipley West).

He said he was concerned the report gave the impression the city had a clean bill of health.

"It is quite obvious that Bradford is not the clean and tidy place we would all like it to be. I would like to know how they came to these findings and I hope the Council will work hard on cleaning up the city despite them."

And shopkeepers too, were annoyed about the report.

Tariq Masood, owner of Leeds Road Fisheries, said: "It angers me that this report is making out Bradford is a clean place to live.

"Rubbish is being dumped everywhere around here all the time. It's disgusting."

Councillor Anne Hawkesworth, Bradford Council's executive member for the environment, said she recognised there was still room for improvement.

"Unfortunately, there are still some people who continue to drop litter and to fly tip at sites across the district," she said. "We have now stepped up our campaign against litter louts and anyone caught dumping rubbish will be prosecuted."

Only last month the T&A highlighted the plight of residents in Fairbank Road, Girlington, who were concerned about a growing pile of rubbish in the street, which they claimed the Council ignored.

Councillor Amir Hussain (Lab, Toller) said: "I think this report is very optimistic. Cleansing is a serious problem in Girlington."

The report also stated that only 185 bins in the district were not collected out of every 100,000 during the summer of 1999 - 73 better than the national Metropolitan average. While the total in Wakefield was more than 2,000.

Ray Smith, head teacher at Our Lady and St Brendan's primary school, Idle, was shocked by the findings.

"Sometimes we would phone up and it would be at least a week later before they came," he said. "It was not very often that they would even come the next day.

But Coun Hawkesworth said the report had rightly found that the district's rubbish collection had improved dramatically.

"Since wheeled bins were introduced our domestic waste collection has improved considerably and the amount of missed collections have fallen.

"However, there will always be a few occasions, particularly in winter, when bins cannot be collected because of circumstances beyond our control."

The document also found that 80 per cent of planning applications were decided within eight weeks compared to the Metropolitan average of 76.4 per cent and 85 per cent of pedestrian crossings had disabled facilities such as ramps and low kerbs compared to the average of 67.8 per cent.

However, Bradford did fall short with only 53 per cent of footpaths in the district found as easy to use compared to the average of 76.2 per cent.