A Dundee councillor has called for an end to cuts to the street sweeping team as the city’s cleanliness score plummets.
Prompted by a recent report from the Accounts Commission which showed Dundee’s streets are becoming dirtier, West End councillor Fraser Macpherson has demanded action.
As previously reported by The Courier, the commission found the city’s street cleanliness score has dropped by 1.6% over the past six years and the council’s spending on street cleaning per 1,000 residents has been slashed by 39.8% over the same period.
Mr Macpherson has now uncovered information from the council which show the local authority has plans to cut 45 posts from the street sweeping team.
Of this total, 22 people have already lost their jobs. The cuts are reported to have been made as part of the Changing for the Future review of Streetscene and Openspace.
A Dundee City Council spokesman said it was intended for most of these cuts to come from voluntary early retirements or redundancies.
However, Mr Macpherson urged the council to pause for thought.
“Twenty-two of these 45 posts have already been lost and I do think, given the deterioration in the council’s performance in street cleaning, that there should be a rethink,” he added.
“The staff do an excellent job but the bottom line is that if any further posts are removed, performance will do nothing other than deteriorate further.
“A report was recently brought to committee on a litter prevention action plan in an effort to address this slide in performance but unless there are sufficient staff to undertake the work, the council’s performance simply will not improve.
“It also places an unreasonable additional burden on the staff who are left.
“We really need to properly resource street cleaning and I have said to the director of Neighbourhood Services that a rethink on the deletion of posts is urgently needed.”
A Dundee City Council spokesman said: “The street sweeping and open space management review agreed by the policy and resources on December 7 2015 explained that over time staffing levels would have to reduce by 45 full time equivalent posts.
“It is anticipated that this could be achieved by natural turnover and the council’s voluntary early retirement/voluntary redundancy scheme over three years.
“Street sweeping would be brought fully in line with the Scottish Government’s Code of Practice on Litter which focuses attention on how clean areas are, instead of how often they are swept.”
The Accounts Commission report revealed nearly every council in the country has cut the amount spent on street cleaning in the face of reduced Scottish Government funding.
The Accounts Commission’s annual review of Scotland’s 32 councils found that, between 2010 and 2015, all but four of Scotland’s cut the amount they spent on street cleaning.
It also revealed the streets were less clean in 20 council areas, with the biggest drop in cleanliness said to have taken place in Aberdeen, where the cleanliness rating dropped by 13.7%.
