City of London streets have been dubbed the dirtiest they have ever been with strong smells of horse excrement and vomit in the street.
City of London Corporation members say the levels of litter and mess are worse than ever before.
Cripplegate Councillor Vivienne Littlechild said she is appalled by how dirty the Square Mile’s streets have become.
She said: “It’s deeply depressing to see dirty, scruffy streets in this City.
“I’ve lived here for almost 40 years. I have never known the streets to be as they are now.
“The Friday night drinkers leave their deposits and that’s left for days on end.
“It’s terrible. People lose control and they vomit anywhere they feel like and we have to walk past it constantly.”
She also said she was disgusted by the amount of horse excrement left behind after the Lord Mayor’s Show on November 13.
She added: “It was absolutely appalling. I’ve lost my sense of taste and smell generally speaking since I’ve had COVID but I could smell that… and I was thinking ‘where’s that coming from?’”
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The City agreed to slash its street cleaning budget for 2021/22 by £760,000 in January.
But members said the Square Mile is getting filthier as more people return to the area following the easing of lockdown restrictions.
Keith Bottomley, Chair of the Corporation’s Environment Committee, said: “The absolutely superb levels of cleansing that we’ve had in the past are not going to continue… and the busier the City gets the more this is becoming an issue.”
Cllr Littlechild said: “It’s just depressing to see how the City is allowing its reputation to drop that far.
“I really think you have to rethink that budget.
“The route I don’t want to go down is that we end up like Westminster – a very large local authority who have allowed the whole of the West End to go to pot.
“The West End is vile. It’s the only way to describe it.
“You go along Shaftesbury Avenue, it is disgusting.”
A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation said: “We work hard to ensure the highest levels of cleanliness in the City.
“The Square Mile is the world’s leading international financial centre.
“Its workers and residents rightly expect the street scene to be of a very high standard in which to live and work.”
Westminster City Council was contacted for comment.
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