£700,000 more to Keep North Edinburgh Clean

Last Wednesday there was a very poorly attended Neighbourhood Partnership meeting in the Thomas Morton Hall, where there were more people on the 'top table' than there were in the audience. That was a shame, as there was a fair bit of good news to come out of the meeting - not least on litter. A subject that has cropped up on this blog on more than one occasion.

The Leith area is consistently one of the most littered areas of the city. In part, this is simply a reflection of the high density of this part of the city - there's a lot of people crammed into this corner of the world, and given that 43% of Scots admit to dropping litter - this sadly means that there's also more people who drop litter per square mile.

It is great to see the city chambers have recognised that extra resources are required, and so an extra £700K has been allocated to street cleaning and grounds maintenance for the next year. At the neighbourhood partnership we got some detail on how this will be spent:

• 30 extra temporary staff to add to the current contingent of 64 street cleaning staff and 16 grounds maintenance staff.
• 9 new 'Barrow Beats' covering the length of Leith walk and Great Junction Street and the surrounding streets.
• 2 new Environmental wardens.
• Extra vehicles.

Council officials are hopeful that these extra resources will allow improvements to both the cleanliness of the streets and the way local greenspaces and walkways are maintained. Most of the new staff are set to start work in the 2nd week of April.

Whilst we're on the subject of litter, we note that the Evening News recently published two very critical articles of the Edinburgh Environmental Warden service, calling for the council to scrap the service altogether. Those articles were based on a Freedom of Information request Greener Leith put in to the council.

Greener Leith doesn't share the view that the service should be scrapped altogether, but when we look at these figures it's clear that some thought needs to be put into the role of the wardens. Given that there has been a significant year on year decline in the number of fixed penalty tickets issued by the wardens we wonder whether their role is now so broad that they are unable to act as a deterrent to that 43% of people in Scotland who readily admit they drop litter?

In the 2006/07 financial year the Edinburgh wardens issued 527 litter fines and 164 dog fouling fines city wide. Yet, in the first 9 months of this financial year the wardens had issued just 129 litter fines and 87 dog fouling fines throughout the city. That's looking like the wardens are barely managing to issue half the fines they were two years ago. When you break this down to Leith the issue becomes even clearer - In the 9 months from April 2008 the wardens service fined just 15 people for litter and 8 people for dog fouling.

Given these figures, Greener Leith is delighted to learn that the North Edinburgh Area is to gain extra wardens as they are sorely needed. But without a refocussing of the wardens time on enforcement, we wonder whether the extra staff will make as much difference as they could.

A relentless focus on tackling this costly form of law breaking, and a clear zero tolerance message has made a huge difference to Glasgow, where many thousands of fines have been issued in just the last two years. In Aberdeen, the council has recently created a 75 strong team of super wardens with powers to issue parking tickets as well as littering and dog fouling fines. If other Scottish cities see the value of increasing the numbers of fines issued to litter louts, and can come up with innovative ways to do it, we can't help but wonder why Edinburgh seems to be failing to follow suit?

Comments

[Jock]

This is great news. The top end of Pilrig St is a complete disgrace. It needs to be cleaned daily. Even when it is cleaned it is often half-heartedly done with gutters only partly swept etc. Only a combined response of punishment/zero tolerance and a properly run street cleaning service will make any difference. Why should Leith have to put up with the mess?

[Mike]

Bothwell Street is an absolute disgrace also, just used as a dumping ground from people in the surrounding area. There are numerous wheelie bins which are quite often overflowing as people double park in front of them. Litter is left to pile up in the streets. People really need to take the council to task regarding this. I know a lot of it is about educating people (will never happen), but it's as if the Council have given up with certain areas of town.

I despair at the state of some of the streets.

[Helen]

We'd have been there if we'd known. Is there a mailing list we can join? If we had actually got round to paying up to join Greener Leith by now would you guys have told us? (That might galvanise us into getting the moolah out!)

[Ally]

We do have a mailing list and it's free! You can sign up for it here - http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=92502 We are in the process of setting up a 'members only' area of the website though, so if that's the kind of thing that will help you get the moolah out then we'll be delighted to give you early access :)

In the meantime, we have a good discount offer from the City Car Club that's available to new members.

[Charlotte]

Edinburgh Council does have a 'rapid' response unit that will come out and clean up the mess in the streets and empty full bins. I have it on my mobile and often use it as I walk past a particularly offensive bit of littering and give them the location. The number to dial is 0131 529 3030. They are also very helpful when asked to empty overflowing recycling bins or pick up stray sofas and televisions. I realise that the system is not perfect, but they face a bit of an uphill struggle while some of us still find it perfectly acceptable to dump our rubbish in the street.