Council bosses have promised to keep the streets of Dudley clean with a £280k per annum spending pledge.

Dudley Council has promised the funds for the next three years to aid the work of the award-winning street cleansing team.

The money will be used to sweep town and village centres, trunk roads and residential estates on a more regular basis and delivers an additional £80k per annum to cleanse roads and pavements and undertake emergency cleansing.

It will also see the replacement and enhancement of street furniture with benches and fences set to be painted. The enhancements will include 300 new combined dog foul and general litter bins, which will deliver more resources for the available funding in accordance with new legislation.

A crew of 54 people make up the front-line street cleansing team, who will cover approximately 2,300 miles every month. The team will also utilise the funding in its ongoing work to tackle and clear up fly tipping. Councillor Karen Shakespeare, cabinet member for public realm, said:

"We have allocated this funding as a reflection of the value we place in the local environment and in recognition of the many residents who have told us of how important the local environment is to people who live in Dudley borough.

"Dudley borough has 3,000 litter bins and 1,000 dog foul bins and the money will be used to buy 300 brand new combined bins to cover more areas across the borough.

"Our street cleansing crew do a fantastic job at keeping our borough clean and this allocation will help to maintain their vital work."

Dudley Council’s street cleansing team has been a finalist in the APSE awards every year since 2005 and brought the trophy back to Dudley for Best Performer in 2007, 2009 and 2010. It also won the Service Award in 2014 after being named winner in the Best Community & Neighbourhood Initiative.

People can report fly-tipping and littering via the council’s website at dudley.gov.uk or by contacting Dudley Council Plus on 0300 555 2345.