YORK'S 37,000 road gullies will now get an extra spring clean each year after extra cash was allocated to the highways department.

The move comes after a flood of complaints over gullies being blocked. An additional £20,000 will be added to City of York Council's budget to ensure that all the gullies lining city centre and main urban routes can be cleaned twice a year.

Principal engineer Fred Isles said: "The new proposals should ensure that we are able to significantly lower the number of overflowing gullies and introduce a cost saving of between £11,500 and £17,500 by reducing the amount of reactive cleaning we have to do."

Updated: 09:01 Thursday, July 31, 2003