Brighton and Hove has joined a growing list of cities demanding cash from chewing gum makers to help clean it off the streets.

Removing blobs of gum from pavements costs taxpayers £25,000-a-year, and the city council has now joined 26 other local authorities calling for manufacturers to share the cost.

The council could go a step further by calling for the Government to impose a penny-a-packet tax on chewing gum.

The pressure on Wrigley, which makes 90 per cent of gum chewed in the UK, began at Westminster City Council.

It has been calling for a levy and invited other local authorities to sign a Wish You Weren't Here postcard to Wrigley.

This week, Liverpool City Council became the first in the UK to officially pass a proposal calling for the chewing gum tax.

Brighton and Hove council environment committee chairwoman Gill Mitchell said: "I was happy to sign the Westminster postcard but the campaign will not stop there.

"I will be sitting down with council officers and looking at what councils like Westminster and Liverpool are doing and the arguments for and against a levy.

"Chewing gum makers should contribute towards the cost of cleaning up their own mess.

"It is something I get very annoyed about, when I see council workers cleaning up chewing gum only to come back days later to see a familiar carpet of blobs."

Contractors in Brighton and Hove clean up 2.2 million pieces of gum a year, covering more than 48,000 square metres of pavement.

Each stick of gum costs around 3p to manufacture but 10p to scrape off the pavement.

Any proposal calling for a tax on gum could spark debates in the city council.

Labour, the Lib Dems and the Green group have indicated they would support such a motion but Conservative leader Garry Peltzer-Dunn is not convinced a levy is the answer.

He said: "It is one idea but how much of the money raised would be spent on the administration of collecting it?"

A spokesman for the Biscuit, Cake and Confectionery Association said: "A tax would not be effective as people would feel they had the right to drop gum because they had already paid for it to be cleaned up."

Friday April 29 2005