HUNDREDS of streets in York could be cleaned only four times a year instead of 12, as the cash-strapped city council struggles to save money.

Officials have drawn up plans for an overhaul of street-cleaning schedules.

Full details have yet to be made public but Acomb councillor Stuart Barnes obtained ‘before and after’ maps for his ward, Acomb, showing many streets being moved from monthly to quarterly cleaning. They include Almsford Road and the streets off it and most streets off Beckfield Lane.

At the same time though, some smaller streets, which are currently not on the council’s cleaning schedule at all, will gain quarterly cleans.

Labour opposition councillors accused the ruling executive of secrecy but Cllr Andrew Waller, executive member for the environment, hit back.

He said a report presented to him in January showed the previous Labour cabinet had agreed in 2014 to cut £750,000 from ‘place based services,’ including cleaning, between 2015 and 2018, but said there was no detail on how this would be done.

He said: “This is the position that the new administration inherited and has worked hard to pull around. We have put back into the budgets an additional £75,000 for ward cleansing, £35,000 for additional litter bins, and have devolved £200,000 to ward budgets for local decision making.”

He said all councillors had been consulted over the summer and it had been agreed to trial the new schedule for six months, before a review next spring.

He said: “We need to have a system which makes best use of the resources that the council has by utilising local information. I am determined that all councillors and residents should know what the council is committing to do in each community and these maps are going on the council website.”

Labour Clifton councillor Danny Myers said there appeared to be “a lack of transparency” from Cllr Waller in enabling the public and councillors to fully understand what the cuts would mean on individual streets.

He said: “We believe these secretive cuts to keeping the streets clean need to be brought out into the open as they will have a serious impact on residents who will want to fully understand what is being planned.

“There hasn’t been any suggestion of consultation on this issue, it’s just been presented as a done deal.”

Labour said that in Clifton, streets moving from monthly to quarterly cleaning included Brompton Road, Lucas Avenue and Westminster Road, and that in Guildhall ward streets affected would include Hope Street, Long Close Lane and Navigation Road.

Neil Ferris, director of city and environmental services, said: “Officers work hard to adapt and deploy our resources to deliver the best services we can and this project is no exception. As ever, data and local information have been used to create the latest schedules.”

A row over the cleanliness of York broke out last week, when civic trust bosses and a senior councillor publicly disagreed over accusations that the city streets were being left to become dirty and litter-strewn.

York Civic Trust’s annual report was published last week, and complained that York’s streets were facing “decreasing standards of cleaning and rubbish collection”. However, council environment boss Cllr Andrew Waller said the civic trust had only themselves to blame, as they had lobbied for smaller bins.