The results of a Street Scene survey carried out this July showed that more people – 56% of those surveyed - are now happy with the cleanliness of their local town centre and believe that this has really improved over the last year. In terms of the cleanliness of their local residential area, the number of people who said they thought this was clean and tidy stayed the same – 34% of those surveyed - with the Council acknowledging there is more work to be done in those areas.
The survey was completed by local residents during a series of roadshows held around the county borough and also online via the Council’s website.
A separate annual independent survey by Keep Wales Tidy also showed that 94.2% of streets inspected in Blaenau Gwent were predominantly free of litter or refuse apart from some small items in both 2016/17 and 2017/18 – this was a significant improvement from 88.3% in 2015/16.
Councillor Garth Collier, Blaenau Gwent Council’s Executive Member for the Environment says:
“Thank you to everyone who took part in the survey - it was good to get out and talk to people about whether the additional work and resources we put in place to improve street cleanliness in the county borough is making a difference. We were pleased to see that the changes are starting to make an impact, especially in terms of our town centres. It is important to have clean, tidy and attractive town centres in order to attract shoppers and help small businesses to thrive.
“We will continue to put our resources to best use to work to improve our residential areas. It was encouraging to see from talking to people that there is an acknowledgement that not everything is the Council’s responsibility and that everyone can play a part in keeping their community clean and tidy and have a sense of pride about where they live.
“It was overwhelmingly clear from the survey that having a clean and attractive living environment remains hugely important to the people of Blaenau Gwent which only reinforces our decision to invest additional money and manpower; and strengthens our commitment that this will continue to be one of our top priorities going forward.”
In October 2017 the new political administration of the Council agreed to invest an additional £330,000 into the street cleansing budget. This came as the result of feedback from the public that they felt the general cleanliness and appearance of the areas in which live was unacceptable. This also included things such as grass cutting, weed spraying, dog fouling and fly tipping as well as general litter.
As a result the street cleansing schedule was increased to include town centre cleaning on a Saturday; increased capacity on cleansing teams and the introduction of a fifth cleansing team focussing on power washing and grubbing out; a reactive dog fouling service and increased grass cutting and weed spraying.