A Wigton Town Councillor has placed posters around the town this week to remind residents to pick up their waste.

Sandra Hodson has put up the artwork, which have all been designed by Year Two students at Wigton Infant School, to ensure that those who litter on the paths use the provided bins.

Cllr Hodson said: “We had really bad spates of littering and dog mess and we thought it would be a good idea to get the school children involved to get more people aware. It’s the children who are most affected as they are walking on these paths to get to school and we’re having shoes and prams get covered in mess.

“The culprits were letting their dogs foul on major school routes and it seemed like a good idea to get the pupils involved with the posters.”

When asked how the school got involved, Sandra said: “I’m the school bus driver and am there every day. Cllr Robson and I asked Mr Norman from the Infant School if they would like to do posters and if it was something that would fall in their remit.

“We went out and did some litter picks with school pupils and they made the posters for us. Unfortunately, due to Covid and ill health it has taken until now for the posters to go up, but we’ve finally got them up in line with the new area at Barton Laws. There are also posters at Phoenix Park, Kirkland Park, Speet Gill.

“With the children doing it hopefully adults will respect the rules more. There are bins literally metres away, yet we still see binbags tossed into fields and onto grass verges, it’s not fair on anybody.”

When asked if she had already seen improvements, Sandra answered: “We only put them up on Monday so we haven’t seen an improvement yet but hopefully we will do.

“We regularly walk these routes as we also encounter problems with dog fouling on the football pitches, so we need to check to see the fields are playable before the teams arrive.

“We’ve got CCTV cameras up and hope people will respect the message.”