Street Cleaning

 

Street Cleaning

Litter clearance provided by Perth & Kinross Council covers over 1490 miles of roads and 52 carparks. We are responsible for ensuring that public land, pavements, roads and grass verges that fall under their control are kept free of litter and refuse.  

Litter clearance of the M90 motorway from Perth to Fife Border is the responsibility of Bear Scotland and any reports of litter should be phoned directly to them on 0800 5871108.

• How do we measure cleanliness?
• How do we clean our streets in Perth and Kinross?
• How clean are our streets?

Compliance with the Code of Practice on litter and refuse has assisted greatly in ensuring that cleanliness and cleaning standards have been established throughout the Perth & Kinross Council area. 

How do we measure cleanliness?

Since June 2000 Perth and Kinross Council have been participating in a benchmarking group managed by Keep Scotland Beautiful which is aimed at measuring and improving the cleanliness standards of Local Authorities.  

This is done through a Local Environmental Audit and Management System (LEAMS). This involves a random survey being carried out on a bi-monthly basis of 2% of the streets and other relevant sites within the Authority. 

Compliance with the code is measured in 2 ways:       

• Cleanliness grades, which set out how clean an area, should be.
• Cleanliness standards (PDF - 66kb), which indicate response time for cleaning up.

All areas/streets are "Zoned". Each zone has a time scale within which the council should return it to a litter-free standard. 

What are the grades of cleanliness?

There are 4 grades of cleanliness which are defined as follows: 

1. Grade A - No litter or refuse 
2. Grade B - Predominantly free of litter and refuse - apart from a number of smaller items
3. Grade C - Widespread distribution of litter and refuse with minor accumulations
4. Grade D - Heavily littered with significant accumulations   

 How do we clean our streets?

Cleanliness is achieved and maintained both by hand and by mechanical methods.  

	A small motorised sweeper (Hako) is used to clean pavements and readily accessible areas		A larger, heavy duty motorised sweeper (Scarab) is used to clean gullies and heavier accumulations of litter
	Manual sweeping is used to clean up areas that are not readily accessed by the motorised sweepers		Litter picking is used when it is impractical to utilise mechanical sweepers. i.e. Heavily pedestrianised areas

How are clean are our streets?

All 32 Scottish Authorities subscribe to the LEAMS method of grading the cleanliness of their streets and the minimum standard required is 67.

To date the Perth and Kinross index for 2004/5 is 74.