A litter picking volunteer in Swindon is urging people to take better care of the area they live in and work with their community to keep the town clean.

Karen Leggett, part of the Keep Swindon Tidy initiative, started picking up litter in parks when she was furloughed from work during lockdown and with a team of volunteers, she has collected around 300 bags of rubbish in the last year.

She said: “It’s sad when people don’t look after the space they live in. We try to work with the community and we work with businesses like supermarkets to get them to take notice of what’s around them and take care of those areas. The parish councils help us by taking the rubbish.

“The town centre is a huge area which is heavily littered, it’s like fighting a losing battle, so we pick smaller areas.

"We’ve collected a lot of rubbish from areas like Freshbrook, Rivermead and Bridgemead and you have to keep going back and clearing them because the rubbish appears again and people don’t like seeing it.

“You never know what you’re going to find – we’ve found tyres, televisions and even a suitcase full of nice clothes.”