HIGH levels of sick leave among council cleaning staff are being blamed for the amount of rubbish on a Stockton's street.

On average, almost one in ten of the council's street cleaners are off sick at any one time.

John Latimer, of Countisbury Road, Norton, has waged a three-year campaign to get the council to collect rubbish dumped in nearby Junction Road. He claims that despite numerous letters and visits to the council, the area is not cleaned to a high enough standard.

He said: "It seems the council does not want to clean the road up, despite being told about the problem.

"There is one litter bin on the road, but people don't use it, and it's up to the council to make the road clean.

"It has become a personal crusade. I have had meetings with members of the council, but the road is still not being cleaned sufficiently."

Mr Latimer said youths had started to burn the piles of rubbish, which had built up in Junction Road.

He said: "Sometimes there are piles of free papers and children set them on fire. I'm just fed up with it."

Mr Latimer claimed that the council had ignored his complaints about the rubbish, because there were not enough staff to carry out the work.

A spokeswoman for Stockton Borough Council admitted that there was a significant number of staff from the cleansing department absent from work at any one time.

She said: "We have recognised that sickness levels within cleansing services need to improve and they are.

"They currently stand at nine per cent, a drop of four per cent since June, and we are working to reduce them still further."

The council spokeswoman said they were aware of Mr Latimer's concerns about the area over the past three years, and the service was under review.