TV licence bosses were today challenged to explain a hard-hitting advertising campaign being used to crack down on dodgers in York.

Residents who feel their community is being victimised want to know how their streets were chosen for a name and shame poster drive.

Members of Tang Hall and Heworth Residents' Association say the TV Licensing campaign highlighting three York streets, Barkston, Constantine and Etty Avenues, the latter two just yards apart in Tang Hall, has tarred all who live there with the same brush.

Posters reading: "There are three homes in Etty Avenue YO10 without a television licence", and others targeting Barkston and Constantine Avenues, have been displayed on buses across the city.

But today residents took to the streets defiantly displaying their TV licences.

Association chairman David Wilson has written to the Bristol-based director of TV Licensing to voice their concerns and demand an explanation.

Licensing chiefs have said previously that the streets were chosen purely at random from those with two or more licence evaders.

Mr Wilson said: "I would take a lot of persuading that it's sheer coincidence they happen to have picked on these streets. They have had a certain amount of notoriety. To say they have been picked at random is baloney. I would like to ask a statistician what the odds are of that happening. We feel we like we are being picked on."

Mr Wilson also called for TV Licensing to name and shame specific households rather than whole streets.

But John Barber, TV Licensing communications and community relations manager, was adamant that the streets had been picked at random in the Bristol HQ and said the Data Protection Act forbade the body from publicly naming individual licence dodgers.

He said: "We know the campaign has had a mixed reaction. In some areas people are saying it's a great idea. "We totally understand the concerns of some residents who may have taken offence, but we are running the campaign in the interests of these licence-paying residents who have to carry the evaders."

He said the posters carrying those particular street names would stop being used at the end of the month and were likely to be replaced by other randomly-picked streets in York later in the year.