North Yorkshire Council is appealing to both visitors and residents in Scarborough to stop feeding seagulls. The mess they create is expensive to remove, is unsightly and gives off an unpleasant odour.
Cleansing teams target problem areas on a daily basis but struggle to keep on top of the problem due to the shear scale.
Councillor Keane Duncan said the mess the seagulls create was “a major problem” and added “We have to use extra strength detergent when cleaning the streets and buildings. We have also had a number of scary incidents, including more than 60 reports of gull mugging attacks of people and pets over the last two years, so we’re trying to discourage that by saying, do not feed the birds, do not drop litter, clearly fried fish, chips, ice cream are not part of a seagull’s diet, so we want to make sure we are discouraging interactions between the humans and birds.”
This is not a new problem but one that is getting worse and we hope people heed the advice.