CONCERNS have been aired the new Vision for Swindon would take advantage of the goodwill of residents to absolve the council of responsibility for litter picking while cut backs continue to be made.

As part of the series of pledges made by Swindon Borough Council, they have vowed to 'find new ways to engage communities and neighbourhoods to increase the cleanliness of their local areas' in the short term.

Community groups have protested the pledge would simply pass the buck for tasks such as litter picking onto residents, and while head of StreetSmart Leon Barrett admitted his team do not sweep every street, a great deal of education goes on in the town to stop the problem at source.

"Already members of my team do work in schools around education, and that is mainly around disposal but also the cost of problems such as graffiti, so we can get people to understand the cost and the damage of their actions," he said.

"We do not sweep every street, and those areas are focused on which has the highest footfall, and the town centre is a prime example of that."

Kevin Fisher, chairman of the Shaw Residents Association, said: "Of the four priorities just announced by the council, the third is keeping clean streets, and reducing budgets will not help to keep the streets clean around Swindon.

"To take the goodwill of residents who are out litter picking quite regularly and say you are going to cut our budget even further from just one litter picker in the whole of West Swindon and still keep clean streets as a priority in the new vision is an unacceptable position to take.

"The answer is surely around education and to discourage littering."

Coun Mary Martin (Con, Shaw) said cutbacks are still inevitable as council funding continues to shrink.

"It is no news to anybody that the council is facing large financial pressures, and the two top consumers of the budget we have is adult social care and children's services - for vulnerable children and those with special needs," she said.

"As the budget gets further squeezed, those pressure areas, which are statutory, are not going to get any smaller, which will put pressure on other areas.

"We have asked the question of our officers whether we can ring fence StreetSmart budgets, but that is not possible. Myself and all my colleagues feel very strongly that the ability to have a nice environment is essential to all our residents, and we are fighting to keep as much as we can."

Coun Steph Exell (Lab, Mannington and Western), said it would be unreasonable to ask residents to take on the task.

"Residents will be very surprised that despite paying their council-tax, the council is expecting them to clean the gullies on their streets.

"The council may think by expecting residents to fulfil these tasks previously done by itself that it is saving money without the streets necessarily being dirtier but realistically Swindon's streets becoming dirtier is exactly the outcome of this council policy.

"This approach absolves all responsibility for cleaning our residential roads. I think the council needs to look at investing more to keep our streets cleaner, including gully cleaning, which will in turn improve the reputation of our town amongst our own residents let alone residents outside of Swindon."