Street Cleansing

Ken - one of the SABC Street Cleansing team

The Council is responsible for keeping adopted highways clean and litter-free, within the requirements of the Environmental Protection Act.

How often do you clean the streets?

We aim to keep the environment as pleasant as possible, and have a routine programme of cleaning which is supplemented by extra sweeping when needed, for instance in busy visitor areas or after major events.

We do not have the resources to sweep all the streets at the same frequency, and therefore try and reflect perceived need. We don't always get it right. If you think an area has fallen below the high standard of cleanliness you would expect, tell us and we will respond, possibly asking one of our supervisors to visit and examine the problem. You can contact us by email, or call us on 01743 281155. If we agree that the area falls short of the standard, we will bring the area back up to standard within 2 days - sooner if legislation requires a more rapid response.

What standards do you work to?

Cleanliness standards are described in the Environmental Protection Act. This specifies zones reflecting how busy they are for pedestrian traffic and therefore how much litter is likely to be generated. The standards allow us to concentrate on dirty areas and not waste time and money on areas that are already clean.

The standards you can expect

We try to maintain the highest standards in our street cleansing work. We monitor:

• Your satisfaction with our cleansing work
• The percentage of streets cleaned to the required standards
• Spending on our street cleansing

We report on our performance in these and other areas in our Best Value Performance Plan every April, and also publish our targets for improving performance.