A politician says money used on a campaign to improve gender diversity should be used to warn people to stop flytipping.

The Women We See competition, launched in July challenges media and advertising companies to produce a 10-second video clip and digital display for the London Underground network, which represents women in “all their diversity.”

It was launched by Transport for London (TfL) and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

Conservative London Assembly member Susan Hall is calling on Mr Khan to divert the £500 thousand prize money into running an anti-fly tipping campaign on TfL networks.

Ms Hall said: “I’m suggesting the money would be better spent on cleaning the streets up.

“We’ve now reached crisis point. London is England’s fly-tipping capital and the problem is getting drastically worse every year.”

The calls come as part of a report by Ms Hall, which looks at fly-tipping in the capital and explains what she thinks needs to be done to tackle the issue.

The latest data from the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) show fly-tipping in the capital is higher than any other region in the UK.

In 2016 there were over 350 thousand recorded fly-tipping incidents in London, out of over one million nationally.

Data from London councils in the report also estimate London local authorities spend over £18million on clearing up fly tipping each year.

Ms Hall said Mr Khan should “make use of” spare advertising space on TfL networks to run the campaign but did stress that he should prioritise paid adverts over those for a potential anti-fly tipping campaign first.

The report also said the £500 thousand from TfL’s Women We See competition should only “part-fund” her proposed anti-fly-tipping campaign.

But Mr Hall was not clear about where she expected the other funding for the campaign to come from.

She said: “There is all sorts of funding from other parts of the Greater London Authority (GLA) that could be used.

“I think he just needs to get his priorities right. He could also use his considerable influence.”

The report also suggested the Greater London Authority provides legal services to take fly-tipping cases to court after local authorities have caught the perpetrators, as well as funding extra CCTV to record fly-tippers.

Mr Hall also used the report to call on Mr Khan to bring back the Capital Clean Up programme.

The programme was previously run under the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and awarded grants to community groups to undertake clean-up events to removed litter and fly-tipping.