SOME of the UK's biggest high street names are among businesses hit with nearly 450 fines for littering in Glasgow in just eight months.

SOME of the UK's biggest high street names are among businesses hit with nearly 450 fines for littering in Glasgow in just eight months.

The list of shame, given to the Evening Times today by Glasgow City Council, includes banking giants HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland and Abbey.

HBOS, which claims to have recycling facilities in every branch, is expected to announce profits of more than £5.5billion next week, yet was still found flouting litter laws on the streets of Scotland's biggest city.

Unsurprisingly, takeaways were among the worst offenders, according to the latest statistics which cover May to December 2007.

Designer stores including Ralph Lauren, Urban Outfitters, Karen Millen, Miss Sixty and USC appear on the list too, alongside high street favourites such as Dorothy Perkins, New Look, Dixons and The Body Shop.

The Rogano, one of Glasgow's most famous restaurants, was also among the business litter louts, as were popular city centre bars including The Social, Bouzy Rouge and The Counting House.

Among the other businesses hit with the £50 fines are international food chains Starbucks, McDonald's and Pret a Manger - all of which claim to have environmentally friendly policies.

And the figures show some businesses - including Carphone Warehouse, Subway, McDonald's and the Royal Bank of Scotland - were fined more than once.

The worst offenders were Subway and Starbucks, who were both slapped with 11 fines across various branches, and Carphone Warehouse with nine fines.

The businesses were issued with a total of 449 fines by litter wardens for illegally doing one or more of the following:

• Dumping rubbish on the pavements in black bags
• Chucking out unsecured cardboard boxes
• Allowing wheely bins to overflow
• Leaving bags on the streets outside designated uplift times Even top legal firms appear in the list, including Harper McLeod, Franchi Finnieston, The Lambie Law Partnership and HBJ Gateley Wareing.

Last October the city council set up the Clean Glasgow Business Charter as part of the Clean Glasgow campaign, launched last year and supported by the Evening Times.

It urged all of the city's 20,000 firms to sign up, and so far 649 have done so.

As part of the initiative, every shop, hotel, office, restaurant and factory was issued with a four-page document outlining how to keep the streets clean and make the best of clean-up services.

However. it seems many city businesses chose to ignore the advice.

A city council spokesman described the number of fines issued as "unacceptable" and said all businesses had a duty to keep their environment tidy.

He added: "The large number of fines issued to businesses - both large and small - illustrates that no-one will go unchallenged in our quest to keep Glasgow's streets clean.

"It is unacceptable that so many businesses have flouted the law by disposing of their waste in an inappropriate manner.

"We have achieved much in the first year of Clean Glasgow, however we still have some way to go if we are to eradicate this type of behaviour."

SOME of the offenders moved quickly to defend their policy on keeping the environment clean.

A spokesman for banking giant HBOS said: "There were a few isolated incidents but we have taken steps to make sure it doesn't happen again."

A Royal Bank of Scotland spokeswoman said: "We take our responsibility to the environment very seriously and have a programme of engagement with our suppliers to ensure incidents of this nature are minimised.

"We are aware of the incidents in Glasgow and have worked closely with our staff and suppliers to resolve these issues."

A Starbucks spokeswoman said: "Starbucks Coffee Company UK has a long-standing relationship with a third-party waste collector with an average success rate of over 98%.

"In the majority of our coffee houses in Glasgow, we have moved from refuse bags to containers to minimise any potential environmental impact.

"However, there is clearly an opportunity for improvement in Glasgow, which we take seriously, and therefore we have raised this with our contractor."

A spokesman for McDonald's said: "McDonald's has supported national clean-up campaigns since 1990, providing overall sponsorship and organising local clean-up events in Glasgow and across the country.

"In 2007, our Linwood restaurant was a finalist in the Just Bin It competition, an annual initiative running across all of our UK restaurants, which involves colleagues working with groups in the local community to reduce litter.

"We take our responsibilities in this area very seriously and strongly encourage our customers to dispose of their litter responsibly."

A spokesman for JD Wetherspoon, which owns the Counting House pub, said: "The fine relates to one black bin bag - we're not even sure if it was ours.

"It's an extremely busy pub in the city centre. All the bottles and rubbish is disposed of in a professional way."

A staff member at fashion store Karen Millen said the fines had led it to change its arrangements for getting rubbish collected.

"The first we knew was getting a fine and photographs taken at 11.30 at night. Then we got two more.

"We'd got our rubbish collected every night for 14 years by Shanks and McEwan but if that continued we were just going to get fined, as they couldn't tell us what time they were coming.

"We had no choice but to change to the council's collections. They've benefited from this. I don't see any other rubbish collectors come down the street now. They come every morning."

Carphone Warehouse refused to comment, while Subway did not return our calls.

Liz Corbett, city council enforcement manager, said: "We hope that by fining businesses we will encourage them to manage their waste in a more appropriate manner, creating a more appealing environment for residents, workers and tourists."