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Street cleansing

Cleaning your neighbourhood

Calderdale's street cleansing service is responsible for clearing away litter from adopted streets and public open spaces throughout the borough. We are here to provide the following services:

• sweeping of roads and footpaths, both manually and mechanically
• emptying 900 litter bins and litter picking areas on a daily basis
• removal of graffiti and flyposting
• dealing with drug-related litter
• removal of flytipping and dumping
• leaf clearance
• weed control
• gully emptying
• providing a 24/7 emergency highway response to road traffic accidents, spillages and flooding
• providing support to Community and Neighbourhood Action Groups who wish to improve their local environment with 'clean ups' by providing bags, gloves and loaning litter pickers.

Flytipping

Illegally dumped rubbish is currently happening somewhere in England and Wales every 35 seconds at a cost of up to £100 per minute to clear up. In the last 6 months of 2004, around £24 million was spent by local authorities on clearing up flytipping. Last year in Calderdale we removed a total of 327 incidents of flytipping and dumping costing £69 per incident. Source: Flycapture, a national database developed by Defra, the Local Government Association and the Environment Agency.

Improving the cleanliness of Calderdale's streets

The story so far

We have been working hard at sites that have a particular problem with regular flytipping. We have termed these sites 'Grotspots'. Over the last year we have cleared a total of 16 grotspots throughout the borough. To prevent re-occurrence we have planted up the areas and restricted access through the installation of barriers.

Early prevention

We have been involved in a number of educational and promotional campaigns aimed at encouraging people to think more about littering and the negative impacts that it has on our environment. Our education programme has been aimed at primary school children and we have enlisted the help of 'Commander Diddy' and his litter show to get the anti-littering message across.

We are doing our bit - are you doing yours? Don't drop litter, let's work together to keep Calderdale clean.

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