RESIDENTS who spring-cleaned their area of Colne at the weekend are hoping their hard work will encourage others to take pride in and look after their town.

Chapel Fold Residents Group has been going for five years and carries out clean-ups twice a year.

Yesterday's event was also linked in with a clean-up by the Blascony Association Tenants Group and was sponsored by Bradford and Northern Housing Association.

Member of residents association Maureen Arnold said: "We cleaned up from Sun Street to Exchange Street, Curzon Street to Craddock Road, and the Blascony tenants cleaned from Blascony Square to Patten Street.

"The council put skips out in the area which have been well used and we are appealing for people to look after their area.

"We have made a community garden at the top of Basil Street and we are asking local residents to help us to care for the area by stopping people using it as a dog toilet and also by adding any spare plants they have left over into the garden.

"It has taken a long time for us to get that garden established and we want everyone to get involved in looking after it.

"We have noticed a difference since we held the first clean-up five years ago because there was a tremendous amount of rubbish about then.

"We still do have problems with people dumping large items which if they called the council they could have it collected, but there is not as much rubbish as there was.

"We also want to stop people putting bin bags out early because they just get split and create more litter."

David Penney, from the residents' association, said: "We also recycled any waste that we could and brought it back to the church where it could be sorted if it was plastic, aluminium cans or bottles so we reduced the amount of rubbish going for landfill."

The New Life Christian Centre provided the volunteers with refreshments and lunch.