Cleaner Streets

Croydon North’s streets are in a shocking state.  There’s rubbish piled high and litter everywhere.  Fly-tipping reached crisis proportions under the previous Tory council with 150% increase in reports between 2010 and 2013.  Croydon’s new Labour council has made some improvements and halved the time taken to remove dumped rubbish, but this is only a small start with much more still to do to clean up the mess the Tories left behind.

Steve’s action

Steve launched an independent streets commission to establish the scale of the problem and how to put it right.  The Commission took evidence from individuals, households, businesses and community groups and published their final report in January 2014.  The Commission found that 77% of residents were dissatisfied with the council’s approach to fly tipping, and 62% dissatisfied with street sweeping.  Among their key recommendations were: tougher enforcement against fly tippers, the reintroduction of weekly bin collections in densely populated areas, free bulky waste disposal, changes to street-sweeping rotas, and requiring every business to have a waste removal contract.  The Tory council ignored the report and cut street cleaning further, but our newly elected Labour council has now accepted the report and is looking into how to make the changes residents asked for.

 

You can find the full report here.