OXFORD street cleaners are fighting a “never-ending battle” with litter louts as they try to tidy up the city.

Takeaway packaging, cigarette butts and even syringes are dropped on our pavements and roads every night — and the team of 34 cleaners say they are struggling to deal with the “tide” of rubbish.

Oxford City Council’s Street Scene team leader Mark Latham, 52, called on pedestrians to help cleaners by taking more pride in their city.

He said: “There is no doubt about it — every one of us working to tidy up Oxford is struggling at the moment.

“As soon as you have tidied up a section of the city, it is dirty again.

“It is a never-ending battle and it sometimes feel like we get no help from pedestrians.

“We can only do so much.

“There are only 17 of us on shift at any one time, trying to clear up the mess of tens of thousands of people.”

Mr Latham, who only started his role last week, said he had been surprised by the scale of the problem.

He said: “You work hard all day and manage to get the town looking nice and tidy.

“But in the time between my team ending their shifts at 8pm and starting again at 6am, the amount of rubbish produced is unbelievable.

“Weekends are the worse. After Halloween, you could barely see the floor of Gloucester Green because there were so many kebab boxes.

“Bins were absolutely overflowing.

“We also received a phone call last week telling us about a collection of syringes which had been found behind a book stall in St Aldate’s.

“Drugs paraphernalia is a problem across the city, as is people urinating near places like the Covered Market.

“The town can smell like a toilet in the morning.”

A specially-designed machine, which can clean large areas of pavements, can only be used first thing in the morning because of the risk to pedestrians.

Street cleaners are a vital part of the Cleaner, Greener Oxford campaign, launched by the city council and Oxford Mail.

The scheme calls on everybody to play their part in preserving Oxford’s reputation as one of Britain’s most attractive cities — and help reduce the £1m a year it costs taxpayers to clean the streets.

As reported in yesterday’s Oxford Mail, student Demetrious Samouris, 22, was among several people fined for littering in Cornmarket Street last week. He dropped a match.

Mr Latham added: “I love my job but it would be so much easier if everybody played their part.

People may not always notice the job we do, but they would be knee deep in waste in just a couple of days if we weren’t here.”