Letter: Clean streets would be good for business

There are fine food shops, restaurants and hotels in the city but they will find it hard to retain and improve their position unless all of them improve the way they dispose of their waste and treat the pavements outside their premises.

The better ones should lobby the council and put pressure on the worse ones to establish minimum acceptable standards.

First, no food waste should be placed on pavements in plastic bags. It should go into a bag and then into a wheelie bin with a secure top. The wheelie bin should only go out on to the pavement when the day's collection is imminent. This measure alone would dramatically improve street cleanliness.

Second, all restaurants and especially take-aways should get into the habit of washing down the pavements outside their premises.

Where they don't do this pavements have become coated with grease and they smell of the food waste itself and the urine of the vermin that feed off it.

Walk along Western Road or Church Road or down Preston Street if you want to test this out. There are good restaurants in Preston Street but I no longer eat there because the street is so filthy.

Food outlets should realise cleanliness may be good for business.

-Trevor Pateman, Brighton