Have you ever woken up in the morning, looked out your bedroom window and noticed the roads and pavements looking a lot cleaner than the night before?

Well the mystery has been solved; while you sleep, the streets of Harrow are being taken over by the Night Riders.

Don’t be alarmed, David Hasselhoff is not making a comeback in a cheesy 1980’s television show, this is actually Harrow Council’s latest attempt to tackle the issue of fly tipping in the borough.

Waste and recycling bins are still collected during the day once a week, but due to vast amounts of complaints from residents about surplus piles of uncollected rotting rubbish causing nasty smells and attracting rats, efforts to tidy up the borough have now reached the point of nocturnal litter picks every Monday to Friday.

I was invited to join the Night Riders on their nightly mission last Wednesday but the prospect of meeting street cleaners at 9pm at the Bin Depot, in Forward Drive, Wealdstone, was not exactly top of my list of ways to relax after a busy day of deadlines at work.

However, my lethargy quickly vanished when I saw how hard the dedicated street cleaners work every night.

I joined Night Riders Martin and Clive in the front seat of their bright purple Clean Team van as they drove round various streets in Harrow looking for dumped objects such as mattresses and overflowing bin bags, which are not easy to see in the darkness of the night.

They work until 5am every night and usually complete 48 jobs in one night.

Monday is always the busiest night as the remnants of the weekend still linger on the pathways, but as the week wears on, the jobs lessen.

Tonight they only had 19 jobs, but they still worked rapidly and managed to pick up ten different items in only half an hour.

Martin informed me that since starting in September last year, the nightly collections have made a huge difference in only a few months and picking up rubbish is easier and faster at night as they don’t get stuck in traffic as they drive round.

He enjoys his job, as every night is unpredictable - although he was slightly fed up with finding discarded heavy fridges strewn on the pavements outside people’s homes.

Some of the streets we drove to included Marlborough Hill, in Harrow and Wealdstone, to pick up two sofas and also Fairholme Road, in Greenhill, where we spotted a mattress.

Although the council’s next step is to prevent litter being dropped in the first place, this system of cleaning the streets while people sleep does seem to be making a positive impact.

There is an element of ‘nudge’ psychology in the approach: perhaps if you see less litter scattered around, you will be less inclined to drop more.

People can report dumped litter on the council’s Your Place, Your Space mobile app and then the street cleaners visit and take a photo the site, before sending the picture back into the app to show the area has been cleared.

To find out more about Harrow Council’s efforts to clean up the streets, visit: harrow.gov.uk