GREAT-grandmother Daphne Pook has been on a litter-picking spree at a green space in Walcot to improve her community and highlight Swindon Council’s half-hearted cleaning job.

The 73-year-old, who lives opposite Buckhurst Field, in Buckhurst Crescent, was so fed up with what she sees as a poor clean-up by the council that she decided to tidy up herself.

And in the last two days alone, the retired cleaner, who has angina, arthritis of the spine and a metal piece in her leg where it had been fractured, has filled seven bin bags with litter.

“I’m not happy about it,” said the great-grandmother-of-four.

“I’ve got arthritis, I’ve got a bit of a dicky heart, I’ve got metal in my leg.

“Perhaps I’m one of my generation. We are clean people and cannot stand it.

“I look out and think, why should I look out of my bedroom window and my living room window on all this rubbish?

“I’m not being funny, it’s not my job to clear it up. I complained to the council and said ‘why are you leaving it like a tip here?’ It’s not encouraging people to be clean.”

Daphne, a former a co-owner of Ace Of Maids cleaning firm, said litter had been a problem on Buckhurst Field for years because there are only three bins on the whole site, which are often overflowing.

She said the council does send out people to clean the field, but they only clean a small area over a short period of time and do not extract litter blown into the hedges.

“They need more bins and to come around more regularly and do the job properly, getting the rubbish from where the wind is blowing it, from under the hedges,” she said.

“Not just doing one little area and going home,”

“I would rather see someone spend a day doing one job properly than trying to run four or five jobs and doing a half-hearted attempt.”

Daphne said several other residents have also picked up the litter in the past, and some have helped her the last few days.

She has displayed the bags in her garden to show the council the scale of the problem.

A Swindon Council spokesman said: “We will look into the issues raised by Mrs Pook to see if we can find a solution.”