IRRESPONSIBLE dog owners and litterbugs are in for a shock with an increase in spot fines in the Sedgefield borough.

The penalty for people who allow their dogs to foul, or who discard rubbish, is to double from £25 to £50 from next Monday.

Officers at Sedgefield Borough Council hope the statutory increase will be a further deterrent in their efforts to clean up the streets.

More than 50 penalty tickets have been issued in the borough since Andrew Bailey was appointed the council's environment enforcement officer six months ago.

He said: "This shows the Government's commitment to trying to stop these anti-social offences, because it's a massive increase.

"Since I was appointed, I've definitely seen a lot more people picking up after their dogs and we do get a lot of people phoning up about problems.

"One example of how it's working is when we had an incident in Hackworth Park, in Shildon.

"We had a couple of days where we issued four fixed penalties and the next day I went down and lots more people were picking up.