Clean Highways award goes to London Borough of Newham

“A TOP AWARD has been scooped by Newham Council’s enforcement officers for their outstanding work in tackling litter. Clean Highways, an independent campaign for cleaner streets and highways, highlighted Newham after it issued 8,865 on-the-spot fines for littering in 2011/12″.

Coalition’s audit report shows no meaningful action over litter pledge

The commitment was “to work to reduce litter”  but all they have to report boils down to producing  more documents and supporting more  campaigns –  actions which have not,  and will not, do anything to reduce the amount of litter we see all around us. I have suggested what should be done.

Council asked to get their street cleaners to remove plastic ties from traffic lights

I have written to LB Hillingdon asking them to equip their street cleaners with the means for cutting these ties so that they and the adverts can be removed from the busiest locations on a daily basis.

Highways Agency inspections – Concerns about M40 and M25 contracts
Highways Agency inspection – Concerns about M40 and M25 contracts – Part 2

In spite of assurances given by the Under-secretary of State for Transport to Parliament that “Service providers are subject to regular audit and performance monitoring by the Highways Agency to ensure contractual requirements are being met”  the Highways Agency does not carry out  any physical checks to see if  the service provider for the M40 is fulfilling his contractual litter picking obligations.

Meanwhile on the M25 a far more more lax definition of Grade B (the acceptable standard for verges) than the one defined in the Litter Code of Practice is used in the monitoring process. Averaging is then employed to reduce the impact of areas falling below even this debased standard.   Also, the service provider knows in advance which “random” areas are to be inspected.

Peter Silverman
10th January 2013