MORE tales of litter woe have been pouring into the Evening Press offices following our investigation into the untidy state of some of York's streets.

Bob Williams, of Hambleton Terrace, off Haxby Road, contacted us about the state of the back lane behind his house and other houses in Rose Street.

He said that although he could not fault the binmen who collected bags of rubbish left out in the lane every week, the council was less conscientious in collecting litter leaking out from bin bags which people had left out early and which had been torn by cats.

He said he had also reported incidents of mattresses and other large items left in the lane, which the binmen did not have to collect.

He said: "It's nearly winter and there's going to be rats out again soon."

Meanwhile, Margaret Robinson, of Huntington, said her complaint was about the city centre.

She said she had been sitting in St Helen's Square last Saturday and the litter bins there were overflowing with rubbish, so there was nowhere for anyone to put rubbish.

She then went to catch a bus at one of the bus stops opposite the Theatre Royal in St Leonard's Place and saw piles of rubbish between the railings alongside the pavement and down in front of the basement windows of the buildings there.

"It was disgusting," she said.

A spokesman for City of York Council said: "Lanes are in fact cleaned regularly by sweeping teams but the dumping of large objects like mattresses does cause problems. However, normally these dumped items will be removed during the programmed cleaning schedule or earlier if they are creating a hazard or a nuisance. We would ask residents not to dump these large items, but use our bulky household removal service.

"The new scheduled day for cleaning is Wednesday. There was no mattress in the lane this Wednesday - presumably we picked it up in the course of our sweeping operations, as is normal. The back lane was not swept until Wednesday, as the sweeper had spent a considerable amount of extra time on the rest of his round and did not quite finish his route for that day. It is uncommon for this to happen, but not unusual.

"In relation to the basement areas in St. Leonard's Place, litter is deposited into these areas by people waiting at the bus queue and the council's caretaking staff do carry out regular cleaning in these areas to maintain a satisfactory standard."

Updated: 13:54 Friday, October 19, 2001