A FINANCIAL boost is being used to help clean the streets in and around Darlington.

The extra investment of £4.1m over the next four years will be put into key service areas and one-off projects.

Members of the public were asked by Darlington Borough Council to rank five proposed themes in order of priority for where the money should be spent.

The responses showed community safety and a clean street environment to be the most popular.

The vast majority of the funding, around £2.5m, will be made available for one-off investments, while £300,000 a year will be built into the base budget for the next four years, the majority of which will boost Street Scene services.

Councillor Nick Wallis, cabinet member for leisure and the local environment, said:

“As a result of cuts to the Council’s budget, we were forced to reduce street cleaning to minimum levels and despite the best efforts of our staff and our wonderful army of volunteers, the impact of those cuts were clearly visible across the borough.

“At the same time, the frequency of grass cutting also had to be reduced so our parks and other open spaces were not always looking their best.

“This additional funding has enabled us to boost work in this area. It still won’t enable us to go back to previous levels, but will allow us to return to weekly clean-ups of back lanes, particularly in problem areas, and increase street cleaning and frequency for emptying bins in high use areas.

“We’ve also been able to return to a 12-15 working day grass cutting cycles, which will make a real difference particularly as summer is now upon us.

“We can already see what a difference this is making and we will also be looking at one-off investments for priority areas to fund deep cleans and physical improvements."