Litterbug bill soars as council budgets slashed

Region spending £77m a year cleaning up streets

THE COST of clearing rubbish from Yorkshire’s streets has gone up by millions of pounds in the last six years – at a time when council budgets have been cut by 40 per cent.

Government figures show the region’s local authorities spent £77.1m on street cleansing in 2013/14, the most recent figures, compared to £68.7m in 2008/09.

The rise in spending is in stark contrast to the national picture, which saw expenditure in English authorities as a whole drop from £858.7m to £811m over the same period, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

Since 2010, councils have seen their Government funding cut by up to 40 per cent, with authorities serving in deprived areas hit the most, the Public Accounts Committee of MPs warned in January.

Today The Yorkshire Post is launching a campaign to call on its readers to take action and organise community clean ups next month to make the county sparkle. The campaign, Clean Up Yorkshire, is being supported by The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), which has ran an anti-littering campaign since 2008, Stop the Drop. It estimates the true cost of littering in England is around £1bn a year.

Stop the Drop campaign manager for the CPRE, Samantha Harding, said: “While it’s heartening to see councils investing in environmental quality, they are spending more money at a time when they are being squeezed. This figure needs to drop and that will take a societal change.

“We need to see more money invested in schemes that will eradicate littering, rather than paying out to clean up the problem.”

Across Yorkshire, Barnsley, Leeds and Hull spent the most on street cleansing in 2013/14, according to the DCLG – £13.9m, £9.8m and £9.3m, respectively. The figure includes street cleaning, sweeping and removal of refuse in public areas, as well as the collection of illegally fly-tipped rubbish, removing abandoned vehicles and graffiti. Each authority said the figure on picking up litter alone was lower, owing to other associated costs.

Barnsley Council said it did not recognise the most recent figures, which coincide with changes to neighbourhood services. It is investigating how they were calculated.

Coun Mark Dobson of Leeds Council said: “We don’t want to continually spend money and use resources repeatedly cleaning up after others. Equally, we don’t want communities feeling uncared for.”