FOUR people caught dropping litter in Darlington town centre on Saturday were issued with £50 fines.

The offenders were caught by uniformed council wardens, who patrolled the streets on the first day of a campaign to clean up the town.

Chester-le-Street town crier Marjorie Dodds was recruited by Darlington Borough Council to warn would-be litter louts what would happen if they were caught.

Terry Collins, the council's assistant director for environmental services, said people seemed to have got the message.

"The town crier has been walking round the town centre and she's had some really good feedback from people," he said.

"It's a unique way of getting the message to the public and it seems to have worked. For one of the busiest shopping days of the year, we had a very clean town centre."

As well as giving out fines, wardens issued 50 verbal warnings and nine official cautions. They also spoke to more than 200 traders about keeping streets clean.

"This is just the start of the initiative but already people have taken heed of what we are saying," said Mr Collins.

"We noticed that when we were giving out the fines, people were standing watching and saying 'this is what we want for Darlington'. It costs us £850,000 just to clean up the streets of Darlington every year. We don't want to be issuing the penalty notices, we want people to use litter bins and keep the town clean."

Wardens will be patrolling the town centre again today and on December 21, and will be targeting Firthmoor, Whinfield and Mowden on Friday.