Greenwich Council to consult on street cleaning cuts
Forthcoming cuts to street cleaning across Greenwich borough will soon be consulted upon.
A report uploaded to the council’s website highlights moves they hope will save £150k in 2024/25 rising to £1.257m in subsequent years.
It’s part of moves to reduce spending in various areas as the borough sees budget overruns predominantly down to a lack of social housing requiring expensive temporary accommodation as well as social care costs.
It appears to be a case of returning to the past in terms of how the department and staff operate. Back in 2016 Greenwich ended the “Cleansweep” program which saw staff use of barrows reduce and in turn the creation of area-based groups which cleaned mostly residential streets.
Fast forward to 2024 and it’s out with that strategy and back to barrows. The authority are proposing “capital investment of £682k and revenue investment of £180k will be required in 2024/25” to enact those changes.
Staff levels will likely be reduced alongside these costs:
- £120k for the purchase of street cleansing barrows
- £360k for welfare facility improvements for frontline staff
- £140k for supporting software (route optimisation/Environmental Management System and associated bespoke development)
- £62k contingency provision
The council claim introducing more barrows “will improve personal ownership for all members of operational staff and will improve the service delivery.”
Staff will see “changing staff terms and conditions to ensure weekend and bank holiday schedules have the necessary number of staff working.”
Street cleaning
It’s an unfortunate time to be enacting cuts given town centre public realm work installed in various places across the borough is high maintenance owing to materials chosen. Council Officers didn’t appear to think of mid to long term when consultants presented ideas.
One obvious example is Woolwich town centre. Major changes are ongoing with bright white paving being installed along Powis Street and already looking a state within weeks of the £21m project being put in place.
It’s not material suitable for heavy footfall and easily highlights stains.
And we havn’t even seen the extensive landscaping put in place across various area yet. This will also require extensive cleaning.
It’s a similar story in places like Plumstead and Abbey Wood.
See the relatively recent public realm work near Abbey Wood station.
So while front line staff will reduce, the fate of those at the top who sign off projects that require high upkeep remains unknown.
For now the council have a dilemma; cut local street cleaning further to try to maintain town centres or let those busy areas degrade (even) quicker.
Long running problems
For all the cuts and cost pressures the authority don’t help themselves. As an example, at least once a week I pass an area of dumped flytipped rubbish in the exact same area. It’s weekly at least (and often more than once a week) and has been for more than 15 years.
Not once have the authority ever bothered to investigate to tackle it at source. The thought of placing a discrete camera to catch the culprits, save on future pick-up costs and fine the perpetrator seems beyond them.
I repeat, the very same spots almost daily for 15 years. Reported many times. No initiative from management to actively investigate. This is draining money away.
Expect the consultation to go live soon.
£120,000 on barrows…… are they gold plated or something?
Street cleaning is a really important service for all of us who live in the borough .
It is not an area that should be cut .
Are Cllrs sure that savings cannot be made elsewhere that do not impact on the whole of the borough in the way that these cuts do ?
As for Woolwich Town Centre improvements already deteriorating – again .
Little thought ever appears to be given to maintenance of these expensive improvements .
Maintenance maybe boring ,yes, but it should go hand in hand with the actual improvements .
Otherwise what was the point of spending all that money if basic cleaning is ignored ?
Note the lovely illustrations of that these areas were meant to look like – bit of a contrast with the real thing as shown by the photographs.
We can always place old oil drums on street corners and burn the waste ourselves (or IKEA/Sainsbury’s cladding). Not only will it keep you warm for less than running the heating it will save the council time and money on collection. Oh, and the soot will make the streets a nice uniform grey. The smoke may be a problem but I’m sure a few more LTNs, strategically placed will help even the fumes out.
Street cleaners are heroes. Shame the management are donkeys. This move justifies their existence of course on high salaries.
As my wife and iwander around abbey wood, the amount of black refuse bags that are dumped in the street is mainly down to the councils household refuge system where by the black bin/ bag are collected once a fortnight, surely they should collect the green bin fortnightly and the black an blue bins weekly.
I pointed this out in the original consultation into the new changes. But like a lot of council consultation, they do what they want to do not what us voters want
Another observation I have is that the black bins are often overfilled due to the fortnightly collection.
The street sweepers come clean the road in the morning and their work is quickly undone when the refuse collectors arrive in the afternoon and hastily collect the overfilled black bins leaving rubbish strewn all over the road that had just been swept!
How about waiting until the day after the bins are collected before sweeping the street and going back to weekly black bin collections.
Collecting the black bin rubbish every two weeks is another problem leading to an increase in fly tipping as witnessed in and around Plumstead Common/nearby streets. Not everyone recycles or gardens, using the blue and green bins. It would make more sense to collect recycling every two weeks and the black bins every week. Sigh!
We need to get back to weekly bin collections for all three bins. So black top bins are also collected every week. Street cleaning is an essential service. Like bin collections these are services we pay for through the Council Tax. So should be ring fenced from cuts. Otherwise our streets will be full of rubbish rats and mice. We cannot allow this to happen.
Lack of bin collections and Street cleaning will lead to no end of environmental issues including fly tipping as mentioned
Greenwich Borough is getting dirtier and dirtiest day by day
I am sure authorities must be seeing this daily but NOT taking any notice
You are not wrong Ghanshyam. Greenwich Borough never used to be like this. I am surprised how many people do not know what a bin is. Choosing to throw their rubbish over the streets or discarding rubbish whereever they feel fit.
The Borough is now a dirty Borough with little attention bring given to cleaning and public realm..
I’m SHOCKED by the consultation. This is my response:
“I find it utterly preposterous that residents are being asked to take on street cleaning responsibilities. Council tax is already substantial, and the idea that we should volunteer for tasks that should be covered by our contributions is deeply concerning. Will we next be asked to care for elderly residents to reduce council expenditure on elderly care?
This comes at a time when the council has invested heavily in the regeneration of Powis Street. Have you seen the new furniture installations? They’re already dirty and unusable (particularly at the corner of Hare Street). It’s evidence enough that maintenance needs more focus, not less.
It’s also clear that this survey is designed to achieve buy-in rather than genuinely gauge resident sentiment. By framing questions around “efficiency” and “effectiveness” without allowing us to comment on the status quo, the council appears more interested in establishing consent for a predetermined plan than in obtaining a true picture of how residents feel about the state of our streets and public spaces.
The council should first gauge residents’ satisfaction with existing services. However, I suspect the feedback would be overwhelmingly clear if you asked Woolwich residents about current street cleaning standards.
Finally, with significant new development in the Arsenal area bringing in more council tax revenue, it’s only fair to question where these additional funds are allocated. Why should there be talk of cuts or added reliance on volunteer efforts when the tax base is expanding?”
@Sebastian Richter: that is an excellent rebuttal that will just be ignored. I really don’t know how Greenwich can possibly do less street cleaning than it already does. I live in Lewisham and it’s just as bad here.