�Town centre managers have launched a four-pronged attack on litter louts who they say are leeching scarce resources and deterring shoppers.

Ilford Business Improvement District (BID) chairman Marc Myers issued a blunt message to people who come to the town centre and drop litter – you will face a fine and you could also be named and shamed by the Recorder.

“If people say to me, ‘I don’t want my picture in the paper’, I’ll reply ‘then don’t drop litter’ – it’s as simple as that,” said Mr Myers, who is also manager of The Exchange Ilford.

The initiative was lau-nched yesterday (Weds) and involves the BID; Ilford police, Redbridge Council and the Ilford Recorder.

In a series of special “high visibility days”, police officers will join council workers out on the streets of the town centre “pricking people’s consciences” and fining repeat offenders �60 on the spot.

Town centre manager Neil Davis said it was time the Big Society came to Ilford, in a reference to Prime Minister David Cameron’s vision for Britain.

“We’re barely keeping the genie in the bottle. I could spend three times what I’m spending on street cleaning and the local authority could do as well,” he said.

“We want to get the message out there to the community that there’s a cost with dropping litter. It costs us one way or the other, whether you’re a library user or a business.

“Since 1997 there’s been a shift in what’s our responsibility and what’s other people’s responsibility and we’ve got to take that civic part back.”

Ilford BID, which was launched in 2009 to improve the town centre and has funding until 2015, spends �65,000 a year in cleaning. More than �8,000 alone is spent on contractors picking up surface rubbish.

To hammer the point home council street cleaners will dump all street rubbish they collect on a single day in a town centre rubbish mountain.