I've started picking up litter, says council chief making £95m cuts

The chief executive of Lambeth council has resorted to picking up some of the borough's litter himself.

In an email to staff, Derrick Anderson said he was out walking at the weekend when he found himself picking up rubbish from the streets and wondering "if we could continue to keep Lambeth as clean as we have done with all the savings we have to make".

Mr Anderson, who lives in Brixton, earned nearly £216,000 in 2010/11 and including pension contributions cost the council just under £247,000.

He wrote: "I also read about some of the violent incidents in the local paper and even though over 99 per cent of our residents are not involved in criminal activity I wonder if people feel as safe as we would want them to be and will this get worse."

Mr Anderson said the council needed to save £95 million within four years and many staff would already been feeling the impact of initial cuts "through restructures, services changing or in some cases simply stopping projects".

Lib-Dem councillor Alex Davies accused Mr Anderson of contradicting the council's Labour leader Steve Reed who had denied any litter problem. He added: "Lambeth is sitting on piles of cash in reserves. They should use some to maintain basic services - not resort to sending the £200,000-a-year chief executive out litter picking."

Mr Reed said it was the Government's "unfair approach" to cuts that was putting services under pressure.