COUNCIL bosses are still refusing to reveal the York streets where cars are most likely to be abandoned.

During a meeting of the Executive Member for Environment and Sustainability with advisory panel last night, councillors discussed a blacklist of city streets, drawn up after City of York Council removed 240 abandoned cars which were considered to be of little or no value in 2003/04, many of them burned-out or wrecked.

But as expected, the press and public were excluded while councillors discussed the issue. The authority says that keeping the streets as free as possible of them is part of the York Pride initiative, which aims to keep neighbourhoods clean and presentable.

Officers who carried out an analysis of where abandoned cars were removed during the year discovered that a significant number - 40 - were from only a small number of streets in the city.

The council has said it decided not to identify those streets because it was felt this would further exacerbate the problem.

Updated: 10:51 Thursday, January 13, 2005