Redcar and Cleveland Council is to ask a firm to pay its cleaning bill after 150 gallons of cream poured on to a main road.

The incident happened last Tuesday tea-time on the A171 Teesside to Whitby road.

An Associated Co-operative Creameries lorry travelling from Whitby to Stockton spilled its cargo along a two-mile stretch of the road between the Woodhouse roundabout in Guisborough and Swans Corner roundabout at Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough.

It has been a sour incident for the local authority which launched a mammoth clean-up operation after high pressure hoses, gritters and road sweepers failed to clean the cream completely and industrial strength cleaners had to be brought in.

A council spokesman said: "It was a very difficult and time consuming job because the cream got right into the surface of the road."

Redcar and Cleveland Council plans to recover the cost of the operation by asking the creamery to foot the bill - which is expected to run into thousands of pounds for labour alone.

A spokesman for Associated Co-Operative Creameries said the question of who would pay for the work was a matter for the company's insurers who had been notified about the accident