Little action to clean up city

A recent meeting of the council’s waste and litter working group was cancelled on the day “due to a lack of items”.

While I appreciate officers are no doubt busy and have many demands on their time, I can’t agree that there is a lack of items to discuss.

I thought we wanted to speak about involving businesses in taking on some responsibility for keeping our district free of litter, much of which is generated by their fast food products.

I thought we were going to be discussing this and involving the BID and maybe others to take this forward.

I am also aware of the huge disquiet currently with flytipping by students quitting HMOS (houses of multiple occupancy) across the district and dumping vast quantities of rubbish in the streets [‘Children forced to dodge rotten food and bags of vomit’, Gazette, July 7]. We should be meeting to address what should be done to engage letting agents, landlords and our universities, in addressing this annual scandal.

The state of our riverbanks and rubbish in the river as it flows through the city centre truly lets our beautiful city down, quite apart from being both polluting and hazardous to wildlife.

The shortage of bins along several stretches of riverbanks contributes without doubt to the rubbish that finds its way into the river, and the lack of riverbank clearance between Barton Mill and Asda is shocking.

At a recent meeting of the Canterbury Forum, the leader of the council, Ben Fitter Harding, made a public commitment to improving the appearance of this city, yet less than 48 hours later, the working group dedicated to this very issue was cancelled.

So my question is ‘Does the leader mean what he says or are his words just rhetoric to appease the many residents who already, off their own backs, do so much to litter pick and tidy our communities?’

Pip Hazelton (Labour)

City councillor for Westgate ward