The General Membership Branch (GMB), which represents many street cleaners, says that North Tyneside has the highest percentage of dirty streets than any other part of the north east.

Just over 23 per cent of the borough's streets had "deposits of litter and detritus that fall below an acceptable level", the report outlines.

The GMB gathered the data from the latest round of Audit Commission inspections, published the Commission's Local Government Compendium.

North Tyneside came bottom of the 23 local authority areas surveyed by the GMB, even below Middlesbrough.

The union is urging North Tyneside Council to employ more street cleaners.

Regional secretary of the GMB Tom Brennan said: "Overall we are seeing a 14 per cent improvement in street cleanliness across England in the last year.

"This is good news for our environment and it is a testament to local councils and their street cleaners.

"But there are still too many councils who are not putting enough effort and resources into keeping their streets clean - and that has got to change.

"They need to employ more street cleaners.

"This could be part funded by a levy on fast food outlets where litter originating from their premises is so much of the problem."

A North Tyneside spokesman rejected GMB's finding, saying that the borough's streets were cleaner than the national average.

The spokesman said: "We are currently running a Big Spring Spring Clean campaign, which invites people to work with us to help make North Tyneside a cleaner and greener place to live.

"The responsibility for protecting our environment and our borough lies not just with the council but with every resident and organisation.

"We're delighted with how the campaign has gone so far and have had hundreds of calls from people either wanting to get involved or report an incident they want us to tackle.

"The full Local Environment Quality Report actually rates environment standards in North Tyneside higher than the national benchmark, however, we're not complacent and are working hard to deliver further improvements."

In Northumberland, Castle Morpeth's streets came joint second cleanest with Durham, Blyth came fourth, and Wansbeck was close behind at seventh.