A man has been left having to pay a total of £500 for throwing a cigarette butt on the ground.

Tai Phat Tang was caught by safer place officers chucking the end of the smoke away in Princes Street, Gravesend, last October.

His details were taken and he was sent a fixed penalty notice by Gravesham council.

Eltham resident Tang failed to pay the charge and was sent a second letter, which was also ignored.

As a result, he was issued with a summons to attend Medway Magistrates' Court which he failed to do.

The case was proved in his absence and Tang was ordered to pay a £220 fine, £250 in court costs and a £30 victim surcharge.

Nick Brown, director of environment and operations at Gravesham council, said: "Littering the streets is completely unacceptable.

"The council spends more than £1 million a year on street cleaning activities and a proportion of the litter cleaning costs are caused by a small minority of anti-social people needlessly dropping litter.

"We could spend this money on so many other services if it wasn’t spent on cleaning up litter.

"This is why we will issue a fine of £150.00 to those who drop litter and take this forward to prosecution for those who ignore the fine.

"We are running our No More Litter campaign as littering is bad behaviour and it has to stop."