Dirtiest authorities come clean

17 May 2006

Councils which have been ‘named and shamed’ as having some of the dirtiest streets in the county have been overzealous in the way they had recorded rubbish, according to the worst performer.
The GMB union highlighted the performance of the worst councils last week, after analysing data from the Audit Commission for 2004/05.
Arun in Sussex was ranked as the worst, with 50% of its land assessed as having litter and debris deposits. The other authorities with some of ‘the dirtiest streets’ were West Wiltshire (41%), Castle Point (40%), Stoke-on-Trent (39%), Havering and Coventry (37% each), Hinckley (36.3%) and Barking and Dagenham (36.1%).
More than half of 339 councils were found to have 17.5% of 300 or more sites ‘dirty’, prompting Brian Strutton, GMB national secretary for public services, to urge them to follow the example of councils ‘placing a high premium on keeping streets and public places free of litter and debris’.
The GMB, as the union for street cleaners, could ‘share our experiences with local councillors on the winning formulas’, stressing that there were no cheap solutions or short cuts, given the fact that this was a labour-intensive service.
However, Colin Rogers services director for Arun District Council said there was ‘no way’ his authority topped a league of shame. ‘We did not have the dirtiest streets in the country. We are no worse than average and, in some cases, a lot better. What we have been is to rigorous.’ Officers may have ranked a site as a D – the bottom of four categories of cleanliness – simply because it had one cigarette butt.
‘We will be speaking to neighbouring authorities to see how they would do if we measured their litter under our criteria, and how we would do under theirs.’
Another area ranked as poorly performing was Castle Point in Essex which claimed it had improved since 2004/05 after refocusing on street cleaning. The authority has a new contract with cleaning firm Pinnacle which is due to start next month. This sets the contractor the objective of reaching top quartile performance under the indicator.
A spokesman for the Keep Britain Tidy campaigner, Encams, commented: ‘Street cleaners are the unsung heroes of this country – but they need better training and co-ordination. We have seen examples where a grass verge has been cut back but the litter has been left – because they are different departments of the same council.’
Six authorities – Craven, Sevenoaks, West Dorset, Rother, Oswestry and Purbeck – had one per cent or less of sampled land assessed as having litter or debris deposits. Other top performers were Durham city (2%) and the Corporation of London (3%).

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