BY SUZANNE BLACK

01905 742263

sb@thisisworcester.co.uk

PEOPLE in Worcester will soon have access to detailed information on the cleanliness and quality of their local environment, under new Gov-ernment plans.

For the first time ever, all districts in England will be scrutinised on everything from the number of weed-ridden and litter-strewn streets, to the quality of the litter bin collections.

The Local Environ-ment Quality Survey for England (LEQSE) will be the most detailed ever and will see all the information available online - eventually down to postcode level.

The survey will be carried out by the Keep Britain Tidy campaign and will take about two years to complete.

Given the new survey, and the increased importance the public is placing on the quality of the local environment, the Government urged all local authorities to make the issue a top priority.

According to Worcester City Council leader Councillor Stephen In-man it already is locally.

He said: "We recognise that the quality of the area in which people live has a huge impact on the quality of their lives in general. It is only right that the public should be able to see readily and easily the cleanliness of their street.

"We have put great emphasis on cleaning the streets. The next challenge is to clean residential areas and we are, in fact, carrying out something similar to this national survey.

"We have someone who goes out independently to random areas and records how much litter there is."

A recent MORI poll placed clean streets third - behind only low levels of crime and health services - in a survey of what makes somewhere a good place to live.