The state of the Borough over the last few years has deteriorated. Pot holes, fly tipping, vandalism, graffiti, litter and empty shops all go to take away the pride we should all have in our local community.
We need to change this. We need the council, police, community wardens and local people to work together to improve our are and put the pride back into the community.
The principle of zero tolerance is based on the idea that people are less likely to drop litter, fly tip and vandalise if the area looks well kept to start with. But to make zero tolerance work we all need
to play a part.
The Neighbourhood Action Groups set up by the police are a useful mechanism to involving local people in not only coming up with the problems, but being part of the solution as well.
We will make sure that named Streetcare officers from the council are involved in the NAGs so that more of a focus is put on the state of the street scene.
But it is also important that this is done at a lower street level. There are various groups in the community that do this kind of work already like Adopt-a-street or who have the infrastructure to be able to expand into local environmental and neighbour support. For instance many Neighbourhood Watch groups could expand into this area as well as its core responsibility to crime prevention.
We will work with organisations like Neighbourhood Watch and Residents’ Associations to make then the true eyes and ears of the community of any environmental issues in their neighbourhoods.
There are also basic improvements that the council can make immediately to improve the street scene and help with the zero tolerance
The number of pot holes is on the increase. The council is spending more and more money on the roads and having less and less effect. We need to make our money go further – the way the roads
are being fixed is not succeeding
We will look at new, more effective ways of filling pot holes so they are properly sealed preventing water leaking in and causing the pot hole to reappear
We will also have a zero tolerance of pot holes. The current policy of waiting till a pot hole is big before filling it, wastes time and money. We will make sure they are filled as soon as possible
In the Borough we now have a number of different council employees responsible for different areas of the street scene and the community – traffic wardens, community wardens, litter wardens,
dog wardens and Streetcare officers.
We will make sure that there is cross training between these different wardens, so that if a traffic warden sees someone dropping litter, they can give out a fine to end the behaviour.
Liberal Democrats first introduced Community Wardens to the Borough back in 2004, and since then the plan to increase their numbers by 2 a year has been followed.
We will continue this increase and focus them far more on developing and supporting community groups to take on helping with a zero tolerance approach to environmental issues.
The borough has been paralyzed two years running with the snow in the winter. The annual winter plan has not changed to reflect the changing climate.
We will improve the frequency of snow clearing on secondary routes – so that bus routes outside schools and parades of shops, and outside hospitals and doctors surgeries are kept clearer. We will also improve the gritting of pavements in these areas and increase the number of grit bins available to residents.