Bath is trying to tackle waste from holiday lets - but does not know how many are in the city.

Uncontained waste from holiday lets is a “key issue” for Bath and North East Somerset Council, but its street cleaning teams are having to go street-by-street to identify them.

There is no central register of how many there are in the city.

Waste strategy manager Lisa Gore told a council scrutiny panel on July 9: “At the moment we tackle it street by street, so as they are identified the team will do a lot of research into the background to work out if they are paying business rates/council tax and approach any lettings companies — but it is a lot of work behind it.”

The scrutiny panel was discussing the first six months of the council’s new evening business waste rules, which say business waste must be put in gull-proof sacks and cannot be put out until 6pm. Asked about whether this should apply to holiday lets too, council cabinet member Ian Halsall (Oldfield Park, Liberal Democrat) said: “There is an argument as to whether they should actually be registered as businesses and we should be charging them accordingly but its definitely something we are looking into.”

Mr Halsall said the council was campaigning for there to be a national register of holiday lets. The meeting heard that there are 1,850 holiday lets in the greater Bath area listed on AirBnb alone.

An estimated 1,126 businesses are within the central Bath area affected by the new rules. Eighty businesses objected to the rules before they were introduced and 21 businesses have complained to the council about the policy since.