Cleaner Streets But More Work Still To Do

Streetwatcher says Enforcement is needed

Streets in the borough are becoming cleaner but Ealing Council still has a lot of work to do to match residents’ expectations, according to Council Leader Jason Stacey. His verdict comes after the council published its latest performance figures on its street cleaning services. The figures reveal that 81 per cent of the borough’s streets are currently at the highest ‘Grade A’ standard when they are cleaned, compared to around 59 per cent last October.

Last September, the council spent an extra £400,000 in an attempt to get graffiti cleaned off publically-owned property within 24 hours – and since then the amount of graffiti jobs removed has risen from 48% in two days to 89% in one day. Extra investment has already been put into ensuring fly-tips are removed within 24 hours of being reported, and in January this happened in 95% of cases.

Council Leader Jason Stacey, said: “We took over the monitoring of street cleaning from our contractors ECT last September and since then we have worked with them to rapidly improve standards. We are about to spend an extra £1.5 million on putting more street sweepers out and about in the borough and for longer hours. Making our streets cleaner is one of the council’s three priorities. We know we have a long way to go before we match residents’ expectations, but I hope they will see the council is now heading in the right direction.”

Angela Jullings, who spends a huge amount of her spare time as a volunteer Streetwatcher monitoring, collecting and reporting rubbish in Acton Central, commented on the performance figures from the Council: "We have seen a vast improvement in the graffiti clean-up and response times from the Council and we’ve seen a decline in graffiti offences as a result.  Our streets are also looking cleaner, although, as Jason Stacey says, there is a way to go yet to meet residents expectations.  We’re looking forward to the increased street cleaning coverage due in the summer and this should make an impact to the look and feel of our environment. 

"It’s good to see more residents recycling garden waste and the free pink bags have encouraged this.  There are, of course, tweaks and refining to be made to get things working smoothly. We’ve also seen an improvement with fly-tip response times."  

Angela went on to say that the Council relies on residents to report fly-tipping and graffiti in order to get it removed.  "It would be marvellous if more people took the time to report such offences", she told me.   She also commented: "Having monitored Acton Central for over 2 years now, it seems to me that many of the fly-tipping offences involve the same properties time and time again.  What we need now is for the Council to raise the public’s awareness that fly-tipping and littering is a major offence which will not be tolerated by the new Council nor the public itself and then for the Council to follow through with Enforcement. This hasn’t been evident in previous years and, it would seem, a low priority by previous Councils.  Enforcement has to happen and I’m sure Jason Stacey has plans afoot."

Details of the latest performance figures were discussed at a meeting of the council’s cabinet, on Tuesday (27 March). At the meeting, cabinet members also heard how the amount of garden waste recycled by residents has increased dramatically since the council made the pink garden waste sacks available for free, last October.

In 2005/2006, 152 tonnes of garden waste was collected, but between April 2006 and February 2007, 427 tonnes were collected – an increase of 191 per cent.  

March 29, 2007