PERHAPS stepping back to the post-war 1950s when people took pride in their little bit of the world, will make the streets cleaner.

Powys County Councillor for Newtown West and Llanllwchaiarn, Mark Barnes is asking for residents to do a little in return for impressive results in a proposed ‘Scrub Your Own Step’ Campaign.

Cllr Barnes feels that if we could revisit the way that people in the 1950s looked after the area in front of their homes and recreate that today a lot could be achieved.

Not only in Newtown but across the county.

Cllr Barnes said: “Post war, people didn’t have much but what they did have they were very proud of.

“This resulted in sweeping and tidying the pavements and the more iconic image of people scrubbing their own doorsteps.”

“Doorstep scrubbing is a bit extreme but if everyone could just pick up the rubbish, mess and weeds outside their homes it would make a major difference to the whole town.”

Cllr Barnes feels that if we want our community to look its best we all must play a part and not expect that Powys County Council will always be able to offer the results that we all want for our towns.

He also hopes the campaign will spread out across Powys and that other county councillors will support the campaign.

“It would take five minutes a week to have a quick tidy of the public area directly to the front of our homes but if everyone did this, soon whole streets would be clean,” said Cllr Barnes.

Cllr Barnes is also hoping trhat the power of Social Media weill be harnessed and that people will use the hashtag #scrubyourstep and tag him on twitter @life_in_newtown or Cllr Mark Barnes on Facebook.