Ministers working on a massive shake-up of local government are planning to give more power to communities across Bradford.

The Government is working on the biggest shake-up of councils for a generation, aimed at cutting bureaucracy and giving residents control over essential services.

The vision could see rubbish collections scheduled better, with residents opting for Tuesday to Saturday collections to avoid the problem of collections being missed on Bank Holiday Mondays.

Bradford North MP Terry Rooney welcomed the plan. "If you empower people they will take responsibility. At the moment it is almost paternal - the Council decides what you will have, when you will have it and at what price," he said.

And he criticised Bradford Council's area committees which, in his view, do not carry out the task they were designed to. "It is about 15 years since area committees came in, they were then seen as revolutionary, but it is now time for a greater step forward.

"I think area committees have lost their cutting edge and have become part of the bureaucracy. They have become part of the Council - it is not local people who sit on them."

Mr Rooney denied the move was an attack on local Government.

"Local authorities remain the democratically-elected bodies in the district, this is just a question of how services are delivered," he said.

And David Milliband, the communities and local government minister, added: "Local government can have more power if it in turn also hands more power to local people and neighbourhoods."

Bradford Council's executive member for regeneration and culture, Councillor Simon Cooke (Con, Bingley Rural), has responsibility for area committees.

He said he had no objection to a shake-up but said: "It has to be done in a considered way. I would like the Government to give us some ideas and direction and not simply dictate to us.

"I don't want them to come up with some model in an ivory tower in Whitehall which cuts across the work we are already doing.

"The management of things like street cleaning can be done at a very local level in terms of day to day management - and I think that is the way we should go, working with local people in terms of designing services."