£200k pledged for city centre tidy up

AN ADDITIONAL £200,000 is to be spent cleaning up Dundee city centre.

The extra money will go towards hiring more environmental services staff as well as bringing in private contractors to deep clean the city centre.

Council administration leader John Alexander committed to the funding at a Courier High Street Summit, hosted by our sister paper, at Meadowside.

It follows information gleaned from an exclusive survey carried out by the paper which found more than half of respondents felt the cleanliness of the city’s High Street was “poor” or “very poor”.

A panel including Mr Alexander, business owner Kelly-anne Fairweather, urban planning expert Dr Husam Alwaer, business investor Ron Smith and High Street Task Force director Matt Colledge discussed the challenges and possibilities for the High Street.

Members of Dundee’s business, creative and education communities were also in attendance, and were able to grill the panel on how best to reverse the fortunes of the city centre area.

Mr Alexander also pledged the council would look at reducing “some parking charges” as well as looking at improving vacant shop fronts.

It was part of a range of measures the council will undertake to improve the High Street.

Working with youth groups including Hot Chocolate Trust and Street Soccer Scotland, a programme has been launched to tackle youth crime.

And a review of how the DD1 group works and “beefing up” support encouraging more private sector businesses to join is to take place.

Mr Alexander said: “Everyone is acutely aware: cleanliness in general has taken a dip.

“This is partly driven by a significant decrease in public sector finance. Recognition of that, and doing something about it, is what everyone wants to see.

“So an additional £200,000 will be spent on the environment over the coming months.

“That will mean additional staff. “We are bringing in external contractors and ‘street scrubbers’ (to clean “stickiness” from pavements). But also work in replacing the planters, removing graffiti, and dressing shops which are looking tired.

“So there will be £200,000 directed toward the environment, for more staff and more equipment.

“Over and above that, there is a network of actions being taken forward.

“And hopefully, (people) will see that over the coming weeks and months which, fingers crossed, will have a noticeable improvement on issues seen through the survey.”

Council leader John Alexander.