Southsea Common clean-up takes place after weekend visitors dump rubbish

People flocked to the seafront in recent days as the scorching weather continued in the city.

Pictures taken on Sunday show members of Portsmouth City Council’s street cleaning team, along with casual workers, picking up litter from the common.

It comes after a video showing rubbish scores of plastic bottles, bags and tobacco packets dumped on Saturday.

The footage was recorded by an angry resident, who said: ‘I’m sorry to say this is the younger generation. You see them just get up and walk away.

‘Whatever happened to Keep Britain Tidy. Look at this mess - it’s everywhere you go.

‘You need to clean it up. It’s not difficult.’

The seafront and other popular spots were busy over the weekend as lockdown rules around outdoor exercise were eased in recent weeks and the sizzling sunshine continued.

Rules are being further relaxed from today, with people able to meet up to five friends in public spaces or in a garden while maintain social distancing.

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Leader of Portsmouth City Council, Gerald Vernon-Jackson, said plans were in place to deal with the issue of rubbish being dumped on Southsea Common

He said: ‘It’s a real problem. There are different organisations that do different cleaning up but when there are people on the common there is a lot of rubbish.

‘We’ve put out extra bins for people to put their rubbish in and we have more people scheduled to help with cleaning up from Monday.

‘They are seasonal workers who don’t normally start until June but it looks like summer has come early.’

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