Streets in central Colchester are being deep cleaned in a bid to free them of chewing gum.

Specialist contractors have been brought in by Colchester Borough Council to deal with the sticky situation along the High Street.

In total four workers for Primoserve Environmental will cover more than 6,000sqm of the thoroughfare from Queen Street to Head Street, including the footpaths.

The work, which began on Sunday, is taking place overnight between 6pm-6am to minimise disruption, and is expected to take three weeks – and 10,000 litres of pressurised water – to complete.

Tim Young, Colchester borough councillor for community safety and culture, said: “Due to the actions of a few irresponsible people who do not use litter bins to discard their chewing gum in an appropriate way, we have to take this action to ensure the town centre remains clean and tidy.

“We know that residents want us to remove unsightly gum from our streets, but it’s a labour intensive and expensive operation, so we ask people to always properly dispose of their gum.

“Clean streets make a real difference to a town centre. People tend to have greater respect for the public realm and pride in how the area looks which we find reduces the amount of litter and gum dropped.”

Once the deep clean has been completed, a new hot jet washer will join the fleet of Colchester’s street cleaning machines to carry out ongoing gum removal from town centre pavements.