Town Mayor Julie Hepworth said members had worked hard to prepare for the campaign and she pledged: "In every corner of the town where we have a problem we will work with everybody to put it right."

Town Cllr William Oxley heads the council working party that has been identifying the issues that residents, local businesses and visitors believe need to be tackled. He addressed the public meeting to outline the campaign's aims. Cllr Oxley said: "We've got an action plan based on discussions we've had with a whole raft of people in the town and we've tried to give everyone who has an opinion the chance to air that opinion."

He said the council planned to look at the town's open spaces and see how they can be developed, work with local businesses to improve the look and feel of the town, tackle issues like litter and dog mess, perhaps by arranging a "mass" litter pick once a year, and working with others to deal with the occasional bouts of antisocial behaviour on Friday and Saturday nights.

The campaign would also look at the Monday market and ways to promote it as an attraction. Cllr Oxley said: "It's about people taking pride in the town and also about beating the drum for Pickering – we all need to be out there being ambassadors the town."

But he said the campaign was not about the council making all the right noises and nothing happening. "It's about finding some key things we can do and hopefully this time next year we can put a display on the walls showing what has actually been done."

Local resident Eileen Blakeley, of the Pickering in Bloom group, said the closure of the Market Place to traffic on market days had brought no positive benefits because the stalls were "the wrong way round."

She said: "The stalls are on the pavement and people are shopping at them from the pavement making it very congested."

Mrs Blakeley said if the stalls faced the road, people would shop at them from the parking bays while another resident suggested the Market Place becomes a permanent pedestrian zone to make a much more pleasant environment.

On the issue of litter and dirt, a member of Ryedale Lions told the meeting that group may be willing to do a litter pick if requested. Meanwhile, town Clerk Andrew Husband said the campaign was also aimed at getting local authorities to be more effective.

While the district council was responsible for cleaning the streets, the county council was responsible for spraying weeds on them and there seemed little co-ordination between the two on this and other matters.

Pickering's County Cllr Greg White agreed, saying there was a lot of "non-joined up working" between the smallest authorities and the largest. He suggested Pickering has its own "town caretaker" who would absorb some of the duties currently undertaken by the district and county councils in the town with a slice of funding from them.

He said: "I suspect a small amount of money would go much further if it was managed by the town council."