A NORTH-EAST council says that it is cleaning up its act after its dirty streets saw it ranked at the bottom of a newly-published environmental survey.

The survey of the region's local authority lands and highways by the Audit Commission covers the year 2004-2005 and found 32 per cent of Easington District Council's streets unclean.

In contrast, Durham City Council has come out on top with an unclean rating of only two per cent.

Also not faring well in the survey were North Tyneside with a 29 per cent rating, Gateshead 23 per cent, Newcastle 22.4 per cent, Sunderland 22.1 per cent and Derwentside 21 per cent.

The percentage of dirty streets and land in Darlington was 19 per cent, with Middlesbrough at 18 per cent, Teesdale 15 per cent, Chester-le-Street 11 per cent, and Hartlepool five per cent.

Reacting to the survey, GMB regional secretary Tom Brennan urged the retention of as many street cleaners as possible, saying there were no short cuts or cheap solutions to the problem.

He added: "Keeping an area clean is conducive to building up a sense of social responsibility and a feel-good factor."

Following the publication of the survey yesterday, Oliver Serratt, director of community services at Easington said that the data was more than a year old.