AS the chair of Litter Free Durham, a monthly litter picker, someone who has gone into schools in County Durham and Darlington and talked to more than 14,500 young people about the consequences of dropping litter and as the councillor who proposed the introduction of a private company to issue fixed penalty notices to anyone seen dropping litter in Darlington, I feel obliged to respond to R Fitzpatrick’s letter (HAS, Mar 30).

No councillor wants to impose heavy fines on local residents but sadly the problem with littering is not going away.

Talk to a StreetScene operative and he will tell you that by the time he has walked from Boots up to M&S in Northgate picking litter he has to start again. Litter kills, pollutes, kills and cost all taxpayers lots of money. Darlington council, for example, spends more than £1.3m pounds keeping our community clean but residents still rightly complain with many picking up litter themselves.

The solution to littering is simple – just put your rubbish into litter bin or take it home, but until more people take this message on board, the council is quite rightly taking steps to try to reduce the amount of littering. This will make Darlington a more attractive town for all and if it takes a private company to hand out fines to those seen dropping litter, so be it.

I would like to invite R Fitzpatrick, or anyone else who is interested or critical about the subject of litter, to sit down over a coffee – at my expense – to discuss the problem. I’d be happy to listen to any ideas they have on reducing the problem.

Councillor Gerald Lee, Heighington

I READ the article about rubbish being left near Bishop Auckland station (Echo, Mar 31). It reminds me of when I was a kid growing up in pit village it was pit heaps that were a blot on the landscape. Now they are grassed over or have been removed and it is the flytippers who are spoiling this country.

GO Wright, Sadberge