THIS is your town centre. Colchester is your hometown. So, please, respect it.

In today’s Gazette we bring you a round up of the issues the town is facing in terms of cleanliness, vagrancy and aggressive begging.

Vagrancy and rough sleeping are incredibly complex issues and aren’t going to be solved by one organisation.

So we are heartened to have received a joint statement from both Colchester Council and Essex Police on the matter.

But cleanliness is controllable - by you, me, indeed everyone.

It starts with not throwing out chewing gum on the pavement, finding a bin for your rubbish, not spitting (yes, spitting) on the pavement and maybe, just maybe, not throwing up all over the town when you’ve had too much to drink or urinating in an alleyway.

None of the above are difficult not to do. Yet hundreds of people are doing this every week.

Council leader Mark Cory is entirely justified in his stance taken against litter louts on Wednesday when questioned by Conservative leader Darius Laws.

Yes, the council is responsible for cleaning the town.

But it’s not responsible for all the litter dropped or the endless fag butts laying around.

Nor, for that matter, the urine or vomit in alleyways (although critics may point to nightspots’ opening hours on that one).

That’s the responsibility of the man and woman in the street.

And they should be utterly ashamed of themselves for it.

This is not to take away from town centre firms’ legitimate grievances but sometimes, it just is our own fault.