Glasgow spent third highest amount on street cleaning
GLASGOW spent the third highest amount on net street cleaning costs in Scotland during the last financial year, according to the latest figures.
A report submitted to the operations and scrutiny committee on Tuesday reveals that the net cost of street cleaning per 1000 people was £ 22.27 per person an increase of 92p per person on last year’s 2021/ 22 figures.
Figures from the council suggested that when it comes to spending money on street cleaning in 2022/ 23, Edinburgh and Stirling come out on top.
During Tuesday’s committee meeting, councillor Ricky Bell said he was surprised Glasgow’s net cost was so high when the service isn’t as good as it could be.
He said: “I am very interested in the net cost of street cleaning. It says we are actively reviewing the street cleaning costs and benchmarking other local authority models.
“Could we have a bit more detail about what that means and what the timescale for that is?
“What is the benchmarking showing us because I think most people would be quite surprised that our cost is so high when the service is not as good as we would like it to be.”
A report claims Glasgow has been actively reviewing its street cleaning costs and since 2018 there has been ongoing investment which has impacted the price.
This has included the introduction of bin sensor technology, a bin replacement strategy to increase the capacity for waste and reduce collection rates and route optimisation technology for street sweepers to allow resources to be deployed where needed.
A council officer said: “The individual services are looking at their local financial return because the devil is in that detail in terms of how that is configured.”