NAZI-related graffiti has been daubed on a wall in Huddersfield town centre.

The graffiti says ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – Work Brings Freedom – which was the sign over the gates at Auschwitz concentration camp.

It is believed to have been on Wood Street for months, but has not been cleaned by Kirklees Council.

Lying alongside it is a dumped sofa and piles of rubbish bags just yards away.

A Huddersfield man has described the town centre as a mess.

Businessman Ron Kitchen, from Edgerton, also said it was appalling that the graffiti had been left there so long.

He added: “There is litter everywhere, overloaded bins on the streets and even binbags piled up in the only green space in the town centre,” he said.

“The council needs to start spending our money on the services it is meant to, the public services.

“If you look at what happened in New York there was zero tolerance on everything, including dropping littler.

“The city is now one of the cleanest in the world. If they can do it there we should be able to do it here.”

An Examiner photographer captured several images showing the amount of litter on the town centre streets over the past week.

An abandoned car with a 2004 tax disk has been on council-owned land for about four years without being moved.

A beige-coloured sofa was seen lying on the roadside at Wood Street after being dumped there by an unknown person more than a week ago.

Lying in the stairwell of a council-owned building on St Peter’s Street is a large amount of litter, takeaway boxes, a traffic cone and baby cot.

On Saturday afternoon about 10 binbags were dumped at the end of St Peter’s Gardens awaiting collection.

Mr Kitchen added: “There is no business in this town; people don’t want to come here because it is a mess.

“You only have to look at the number of empty shops there are here.

“Some shops have been boarded up for decades.

“If it was in York or Harrogate the owners would be given a week before being told to sort it out because it’s an eyesore.

“We have so many listed and historic buildings that we should be proud of.

“The Britannia building in St George’s Square has had scaffolding around it for too long. It has been about a year since anybody did any work on it, so why is the scaffolding still around it?”

A Kirklees Council spokeswoman said of the graffiti: “There have been a number of instances of this wording appearing around the town centre.

“Highways rangers have removed the same wording at least six times over the last month. Due to the nature of the wording we have informed the police.

“The graffiti on Wood Street has been covered over and will be fully removed within our 24-hour deadline for racial, hate or homophobic graffiti. All other graffiti is usually removed within eight weeks.”

She added that the litter in the footwells would be cleared immediately and the bulky items, which usually take 10 days to clear, would also be taken away.

Kirklees is set to spend £50,000 on a spring blitz aimed at wiping out fly-tipping, litter and grot spots over the next three months.