SOMEONE once said that there are now so many rats in Britain you are never more than three feet away from one of the ugly rodents.

Take a walk in any of our town centres and it soon becomes clear that in East Lancashire you are never more than three feet away from an empty crisp packet.

Litter is a perennial problem that will always get some people hot under the collar, while for others it's no trouble -- they just drop whatever they want, wherever they want and there is always someone on hand to clean up after them.

Not any more. In Blackburn and Darwen the council has got tough. Residents who left bin bags rotting in the back alleys behind their homes, instead of the wheelie bins provided, have been brought to book.

Hundreds of pounds of fines were dished out when the nine litter felons were called before magistrates.

The council said it was pleased the fines had been hefty and hoped the message that litter will not be tolerated would finally start to get through.

However, Blackburn with Darwen and other councils in East Lancashire have been criticised for creating a mess with new muddled household collection schemes that have added to the problems.

But new rubbish regulations coupled with recycling programmes are not the only thing creating confusion.

Council tips have recently been forced to charge businesses who turn up with skip-fulls of rubbish. The result? Instead of handing over wads of cash for the privilege of emptying their loads at managed dumps, many businesses prefer the cheaper option of leaving their loads scattered across the streets and fields surrounding our towns.

The problem was so bad in Burnley take-aways and fast food stores took to filling the back yards of empty houses with rubbish rather than pay for it to be left at the town's local dump.

To add to our collection of litter woes children at some schools have been banned from litter picking in case someone has a nasty accident with an empty pop bottle. Teachers and education bosses are worried that kids could be at risk from injury while out clearing the playing fields.

It's not just a local problem either. Coverage of Saturday's Premiership football matches gave a clue as to how bad the problem of litter in Britain has become. The weekend's high winds blew debris from the crowd at Old Trafford swirling across the pitch.

While some of the many items may have put in a better performance than the Spurs players who were eventually beaten 3-0 they served as a grim reminder of how bad the problem of litter has become.