Litter had been left lying on a Slough street for seven weeks before a young girl cut herself on a sharp can, a resident has claimed.

Daniel Ciecielag, 42, of Princes Street in Upton Lea, said he’d made repeated requests to Slough Borough Council to have litter cleaned up before his neighbour’s child cut herself while playing last month.

He told the Observer: “It was a very deep cut. She was on a scooter and fell down close to the curb and she cut herself on a can.

“The litter was outside the shops on the corner between Diamaond Road and Princess Street. It had been there for seven or eight weeks, which never happened before. The council used to come once a week to clean it.”

READ MORE: Inside Slough's litter epidemic: Where is it all going wrong?

Mr Ciecielag regularly picks up litter himself – but says the council needs to take more responsibility for cleaning the streets. He believes the amount of street cleaning carried out by the council has fallen, while council tax has gone up.

He said: “We cleaned the litter up – but there’s only five of us volunteering in this area and we can’t do it all ourselves. Every time we send emails to the council about the litter nothing happens.

“The shop owners say they have to clean the street in front by themselves because no one from the council comes anymore.”

He added: “People pay their council tax for this – it rose in April and nothing is being done. In my opinion the council is just wasting money.”

Slough Borough Council told the Observer it aims to clean larger estates in the town monthly, whereas smaller ones are cleaned every six to eight weeks – ‘or more frequently if there is a specific need'. But it didn’t say whether this was a reduction on its previous service.

The council also said it aims to respond to litter complaints within 48 hours after they have been reported. And it said its budget for street cleaning this year is just under £1.5 million – and that the majority of this is spent on staff and vehicles to collect the litter.

It comes after the council said it hoped to save £71,000 in this year’s budget through ‘street cleaning improvements'.

Councillor Gurchuran Manku said this was ‘not a reduction in service’ when the budget was approved in March this year. He also said ‘environmental hit squads’ would be rolled out for cleaning across Slough.

Labour councillors asked councillor Manku for updates and details on the hit squads at a meeting last month.

Councillor Manku replied that the squad was made up of staff from the council’s highways, environment, enforcement and housing departments and is being trialled in Chalvey. He added that more plans are being made to ‘address identified hot spots across the borough'.