LEDBURY'S volunteer litter pickers will be assisted by a Government windfall that will pay for new equipment for clean-ups.

Herefordshire Council has benefitted from over £30,000 of additional funding to tackle litter, and it is now in the process of handing out the new gear to communities across the county, including in Ledbury.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) recently announced the new High Street Community Clean-Up Fund, including an allocation of £33,489 to support community litter groups in Herefordshire.

However, the catch was that the additional money had to be spent in the 2018/19 financial year, which ended on Sunday 31 March.

To ensure that the money was invested before the deadline and in the most effective way, the council used the funding to purchase additional clean-up equipment, training and signage for local community groups.

Council press officer, Rory O'Rafferty said: "Existing community clean-up and litter picking groups work collaboratively through the Herefordshire Stop the Drop network, and their ideas and suggestions were compiled to create a wish list of equipment, ensuring every community had a say in how the funding was invested.

"Items purchased from the wish list include litter grabbers for adults and children, gloves and hi-vis jackets, litter carts and vacuums, signage and first aid training."

Marc Willimont, the council's acting assistant director for regulatory environment and waste, said: “This additional funding is exciting news but the challenging timescale meant we simply didn’t have the time to allocate funding directly to groups through an open and transparent grant scheme. Many of the existing community clean-up groups which do such brilliant work across the county are not constituted organisations, meaning they would not have been able to apply for a grant.

“The decision was therefore made for the council to engage with our network of community groups through the Herefordshire Litter Forum, which is a powerful tool for collaborative social impact, to ensure the additional funding is invested throughout the county where it is most needed and will do the most good.”