Their efforts to clean gum off pavements will be aided by a grant of £27,058 from the Chewing Gum Task Force and will be part of South Lanarkshire Council’s It’s Your Place campaign.

The council is one of 52 local authorities across the UK that have received financial support from the Chewing Gum Task Force specifically to be used towards removing chewing-gum litter from public streets.

Councillor Robert Brown, the chair of the council’s Community and Enterprise Resources Committee, said: “We have now been successful in our applications for funding in each of the four years that the Chewing Gum task force has been running.

“This is vitally important, helping us to target thoughtlessly discarded chewing gum on our streets and open spaces and perfectly complementing our It’s Your Place campaign that tackles litter and other anti-social behaviour.

“Discarded chewing gum is not only an ugly blight on our public spaces, but is also extremely difficult to remove without specialist equipment, so I am delighted that this funding will help to support our efforts to eradicate it.”

Established by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, the Chewing Gum Task Force Grant Scheme is funded by major gum manufacturers including Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle.

It is open to councils across the UK who wish to clean up gum in their local areas and invest in long-term behaviour change to prevent gum from being dropped in the first place.

Allison Ogden-Newton, Keep Britain Tidy’s chief executive, said: “Chewing gum continues to be an unsightly form of litter in our public spaces, although thankfully the scheme is leading to significant reductions.

“People need to remember that disposing irresponsibly of their gum causes harm to our environment as it takes years to decompose naturally – and, ultimately, costs councils vital money and resources to clean it up.”