QUESTIONS are to be posed tomorrow about how clean York's streets really are.

Members of the opposition Liberal Democrats' shadow executive on City of York Council will be quizzing officials about street cleansing issues.

The discussion is a follow up to a similar session in the autumn when serious concerns about cleansing and dumping were raised.

The shadow executive at that time asked for regular updates on the numbers of reports of dumping and litter, together with an analysis of the complaints received.

A council scrutiny committee has been meeting separately to consider cleansing issues. But the Liberal Democrat group claims it failed to address the "collapse" of the service last summer, when members say several cleansing supervisors were made redundant due to budget cuts.

The scrutiny committee produced a report in February which condemned litterbugs and said that cleaning could be improved in residential areas outside the city centre. Members of the ruling Labour group have previously criticised Liberal Democrats comments about changes to the cleansing service

But the Liberal Democrat group now says that a survey it has carried out shows that over 60 per cent of York residents feel that the streets and public areas in the city are less clean than five years ago.

The survey also suggested that most people do not report cleansing issues to the council "because it is a waste of time - nothing will get done".

Other results showed that nearly 90 per cent of respondents wanted graffiti cleaned up more rapidly, nearly 80 per cent wanted the council to incinerate its waste, and nearly 70 per cent said they would like households which recycled most of their waste to receive council tax discounts or vouchers.

Liberal Democrat councillors have also been checking on cleansing standards in their own wards over the last two months, and have reported nearly 100 instances of dumping or unacceptable accumulations of litter.

Among the "amazing examples of decline" has been the dumping and wrecking of three vehicles in the Foxwood estate area over the last three days during Easter.

Updated: 10:55 Monday, April 01, 2002