BRADFORD Council officers are “holding a gun to the head” of Councillors over plans to cut street cleaning services - it has been claimed.

In April the Council will be cutting 25 per cent - £1 million - from its street cleaning budget, leading to fewer staff and mechanical sweepers to tidy up the district’s streets.

Overall 28 staff and five mechanical sweepers will be lost.

Details of the cuts were discussed by the district’s five area committees, groups made up of local councillors, late last year. When they went before the Bradford West Area Committee, members criticised the lack of information on how the cuts will hit their area, and demanded officers return with more detail in the new year.

At a meeting on Wednesday night, members of the committee hoped to get that detail, but the report presented to them left them unsatisfied.

The report said the depleted street cleaning service would focus on “gateway routes” around the district at around 6am each day, focusing on these main roads for around two hours. They would then split into smaller groups, each targeting a different constituency.

It said: “Prescriptive gateway routes will ensure maximum efficiency with the resources available and making key gateway routes cleaner at the peak commuter time.”

A new team would also be set up to tackle “declining standards” on some of the key roads in the Bradford West, East and South areas.

Members of the committee were told there were two options for what the street cleaning staff could do once the priority routes had been dealt with. Every street in the constituency could be cleaned, which would allow a brief clean for each road once a week. Or certain streets could be prioritised, with the most litter prone roads dealt with two or three times a week, and the cleaner streets only cleaned once a month.

Damien Fisher, Shipley Area Co-ordinator, presented the report and said “behaviour change” from residents could also help reduce litter.

Councillor Kamran Hussain (Lab, Toller) said he was disappointed that the details the committee asked for in December were not present in the latest report, and that time until the changes had to come into play was now running out.

Councillor Safraz Nazir (Lab, Manningham) said: “You had a report in December to tell us about something that was going live in April. You’re now pretty much putting a gun to our head, forcing it to go through.”

After a lengthy debate, the committee voted to hold an extraordinary meeting in the near future, where Ian Day, assistant director of neighbourhoods and customer services, would be urged to attend. They said full details of the changes and the impact they will cause should be brought before Councillors then.