Issue - meetings

To receive the report of the Head of Service – Operations.

The Head of Service Operations presented the report on the Update on Street Cleansing and responded to questions from Members in the following terms:

·         that a methodology which maintained objectivity was used to select sample roads. This involved a twelve-month rolling programme where wards were selected cyclically with 5% being re-inspections for consistency;

·         Grade C issues were addressed between 24 and 48 hours and cleared and those areas would be re-inspected within the next month, on a different day and time. It was possible that these could be one-off issues or not.  If there was aggregated or accumulated waste, then additional solutions could be considered;

·         volunteer and community litter-picking schemes were part of the solution and measures would be seen as adequate if maintained by volunteers;

·         street cleansing was responsible for litter and detritus arising on the kerb however there could be biomatter and metals from vehicles and Devon County Council(DCC) would be responsible for drainage and their programme of works did not correspond with that of the city council;

·         street parking was an issue and there was no capacity to suspend parking across the whole city in order to cleanse.  However, DCC would permit 24- hour parking suspension if there were particular issues;

·         DCC was responsible for weeds, but some may inadvertently be cleared when deep cleaning.  Persistent issues would not be addressed by the city council;

·         the standard litter form on the council website should be used to report issues;

·         all litter bins not in play areas were for mixed use, meaning that dog foul could be put in and the waste to energy plant would process this;

·         self-compacting litter bins were being trialled at Bromhams Farm, and these could be useful in rural communities and Valley Parks as they had a larger capacity;

·         there was work to be done on education and to get schools involved at an early stage;

·         further data collation was required, and the online forms would provide this but current lack of digitisation meant it was more difficult to gather evidence and data;

·         enforcement for littering was difficult as those dropping litter must be seen to do so;

·         fly-tipping was a waste issue rather than street cleansing and related to large bulky items;

·         there was a programme of work with Devon County Council and other districts with regard to waste collection and fly-tipping. Cameras were being considered in problematic areas.