WATERPROOF spiders are helping cut toilet cleaning costs at 25 North-East bars.

Yesteryear, a Wigan pub company, is gluing more than 100 plastic spiders to urinals.

The idea is that male customers will aim at the spiders, meaning less spillage and thousands of pounds in savings on cleaning costs.

The spiders - and flies - are already used to great effect at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, where Yesteryear managing director Tony Callaghan recently returned from a fact-finding mission.

"What we found on our visit to Schiphol was that there is a far higher standard of accuracy and far lower level of splashage if a gentleman has something to aim at in the urinal," said Mr Callaghan.

"We estimate that we can save up to £6,000 a year in cleaning costs and cleaning materials and still maintain high standards of cleanliness and hygiene if we can improve accuracy by just 50 per cent.

"Staff will spend less time addressing lavatorial spil-lage during a busy evening, and male customers will run less risk of generating unsightly splash marks on either themselves or their neighbours."

He said the major challenge now was finding a glue which is "up to the rigours of the job".

"But we also need to establish the best type of insect to use," he added.

"The Dutch and Americans use flies, but we associate flies with uncleanliness - so have chosen spiders."

The "targets" used at Schipol airport have helped reduce cleaning costs by more than half.

But having aiming devices on urinals is nothing new.

British Victorian versions had various images to aim for, including bees or archery range targets.