A disgruntled resident fed up with the constant littering and fly-tipping in his home town says more needs to be done within communities before the problem can be solved.

In December, Yasin Shafi and his friend, Awais Javid, condemned fly-tipping and littering in alleyways in the Bank Hall area of Burnley as ‘absolutely shocking’.

Following coverage in the Lancashire Telegraph, environment boss at Burnley Council, Cllr Cosima Towneley, issued a statement saying she believes the council are fighting a 'never-ending battle' against fly-tipping and urged residents to take more pride in their communities.

Mr Shafi, who lives in Ormerod Road told the Telegraph he agrees with Cllr Towneley, but believes nothing can be resolved until the council introduces tougher measures, and residents are educated on the subject of fly-tipping.

He believes an increase in privately rented properties has resulted in a high turnover of people moving in and out of the area, some of whom he believes do not care about the community they live in.

He said: "This used to be a really clean area, and over the last few years the rubbish dumping has become a massive problem.

“And this mess isn’t just behind one street - it’s on most of the alleyways in Bank Hall.

"I agree with what Cllr Towneley is saying but the council need to be a lot tougher with the residents.

"The fines need to be higher and they need enforcing - people need to be told that they can't just dump rubbish in the streets - I don't understand why anyone would think it's ok to do this.

"It costs quite a lot to get bulky items removed too, and there's a lot of people in Burnley who don't have a spare £13 or £14 to get a mattress or whatever taken away.

"There's a lot of new people moving into rented houses around here, we don't get to know who they are, and then they move on after only a few months, leaving their mess behind - they just don't care.

"The council need to think about their selective licensing and who they are allowing to become landlords, and then looking to see if there's a direct link between this and where they fly-tipping is happening."

Mr Shafi said education about littering also needed to be taken back to school level, starting with children.

He continued: "If children come home and tell their parents about fly-tipping and littering then any parent who litters will be embarrassed about this and it may make them think twice.

"However, it's not just the people who are the problem.

"The council come round and don't even empty the bins properly. The other day the recycling bins were emptied but they just left a load of plastic bottles on the floor.

"The council also promised they were getting extra cleaning resources for semi-detached and detached properties, but it's never happened."

In December, Burnley Labour councillors Mark Townsend and Lian Pate branded litter-louts ‘selfish’, 'disgusting', 'unacceptable' and 'anti-social', after back alleys were left strewn with rubbish during the Christmas holidays.

Council contractors were made aware and cleaned up more than 20 bags of rubbish from the area, tracing it back to an address nearby.

The householders were spoken to and now face further enforcement action.

At the last meeting of Burnley Council, Cllr Mark Townsend proposed reducing the cost of bulky household waste collections by 50 percent, taking the price from £13.50 to £6.75, in order to encourage more residents to use the council's waste collection service and reduce fly tipping.

However, the proposal was rejected and councillors instead agreed to increase the cost by 30p.

Cllr Townsend said: “It's extremely disappointing that the ruling administration didn’t support our proposal that would encourage more householders across the borough to use the council’s waste collection service.

"Fly tipping is a major problem for which there is no excuse but the council needs to do what it can to make the disposal of bulky items affordable for all.

"The proposal was affordable and would have been a small price to pay in the ongoing fight to make our borough cleaner whilst leaving more money in people’s pockets."

Cllr Towneley said the council are organising extra street clean-ups in certain areas, but the hard work and investment is being abused by a minority of residents.

Residents can report flytipping and those responsible online at burnley.gov.uk or by contacting the council’s streetscene unit on streetscene@burnley.gov.uk or by calling 01282 425011.