PLANS to hold a “big clean up day” to tackle the litter blight on Bradford’s streets, have been proposed by Bradford Council leaders.

At a meeting of Bradford Council on Tuesday, members will debate a motion calling for a “Big Bradford Clean Up” - an attempt to tackle litter and bring more community pride to areas.

And it would also see the Council working closer with businesses such as takeaways to reduce litter.

The motion has been put forward by Councillor Sarah Ferriby, Executive Member for Healthy People and Places on the Council’s Executive.

She will tell members that despite the Council attempting to tackle the problems with litter patrols, the problem will only be solved through “behaviour change among the minority of people who create litter.”

The motion calls for a Big Clean-Up Day involving councillors and community volunteers across the district, the launch pilot programmes trialling “innovative methods” to be introduced alongside established activities, engaging with the business community, such as fast food outlets, to jointly tackle littering, seeking community champions to work with officers in strengthening community and business engagement in their local areas, and working on awareness-raising campaigns to “educate about the massive cost of litter and to encourage behaviour change.”

The Council will also be urged to call on the Government to “make significant funds available for us to carry out additional work to build community resilience and strengthen community cohesion in tackling the blight of litter.”

Recent government figures show that collecting litter costs councils £680m a year, and recent cuts to local authority budgets means many Councils are now looking at different ways of tackling the issue without straining their shrinking budgets.

The Council motion adds: “The most recent official data from the Office for National Statistics finds that Bradford people are happier than they were 12 months ago.

“However litter dents this pride. It is a blight on streets, parks and other public spaces and it costs councils across the UK hundreds of millions of pounds a year to clear up.

“We carry out street cleaning and enforcement activities against culprits in order to clean up our district and we provide practical support to volunteers and community groups who do great work cleaning up public spaces.

“Behaviour change among the minority of people who create litter is essential in order to deal with the root cause and reduce the huge environmental and financial cost.”

In recent years the council has launched a number of anti litter campaigns, including tougher fines and taking more people to court.

Cllr Ferriby said: “The vast majority of people in the Bradford District care about their neighbourhoods and take pride in where they live.

“Sadly, there is a minority who assume it’s someone else’s job to clean up after them. The Labour Group is determined to support the decent majority while educating and enforcing against those who don’t play by the rules. “e’re putting the call out for more community champions to get involved and we propose to hold a Big Clean-Up right across this district so that we can unleash and celebrate that community spirit as part of wider actions to tackle this scourge and ensure all our neighbourhoods are something to be proud of.”

The Committee meets in City Hall at 4pm.