MCDONALDS have agreed to help a council catch customers who throw litter on to nearby verges after buying fast food from its drive-through on the A64 near York.

The fast food giant has reached an agreement with Selby District Council to supply the registration number of vehicle involved in littering, so the owners can potentially be traced and fined.

The news has delighted Brian Percival, who lives near the McDonalds branch at Bilbrough Top, between York and Tadcaster, and who hit out in 2020 at a growing problem of litter from customers.

He said then that customers had been parking up in farm entrances and on verges to eat their meals and then throwing the refuse away before driving off.

He said residents regularly met with verbal abuse when asking motorists to move on, and one was threatened with a knife, and he suggested then that vehicles' number plates could be printed on packaging and receipts to assist with the prosecution of the miscreants. Now Selby councillor Richard Musgrave has told Mr Percival that the authority has reached an agreement with the owner of the franchise, that if the council has a case of littering reported to it, where a witness has seen a person throwing litter from a car, and within the litter there is a receipt from McDonalds, the business will supply it with the details of the registration number of the vehicle involved if it has been in the drive through part of the restaurant.

He said the receipt would be time dated and could be married up with CCTV footage which was also time dated.

Mr Percival said that as a local campaigner against all litter in the countryside and especially by McDonalds customers, this was 'really welcome news.'

He said: "As soon as the word goes around and the first fines are imposed, I am looking for a greater amount of respect for the the local area. It has taken too long for McDonalds to implement what was first exposed in The Press many months ago.

"Now I am looking forward to the other fast food outlets at Bilbrough Top, whose customers are equally as culpable, to follow the McDonalds example."

Cllr Musgrave said a number of residents had raised concerns with him about litter from McDonald’s customers spoiling the countryside, and it had also been raised at Bilbrough Parish Council last week.

"As a result ,I asked Selby District Council Officers to contact McDonald’s at Bilbrough Top and I am delighted that, as a result, both parties have agreed to work together to identify and prosecute the perpetrators.

"Protecting our countryside is important and I’ll push for a zero tolerance approach.”