Follow Edinburgh’s lead and invest in city cleaning and roads, say LibDems.

Dundee City Council should look into Edinburgh's initiative and create a new rapid response cleaning unit, say LibDems. 

This £3m investment in Edinburgh will be used to tackle litter, graffiti and fly-tipping in the city. Funds have also been earmarked for improvement of roads and pavements. Dundee would benefit from a similar initiative. 

The City of Edinburgh Council will be investing in four extra vehicles that will be deployed to tackle fly-tipping in areas served by communal bins and a 50% increase in spending on gully clearing to tackle local flooding.

Liberal Democrat Strathmartine Ward councillor Daniel Coleman said:

“The Dundee Liberal Democrat Group has continually argued that the cuts to street cleaning and road maintenance in Dundee under the SNP has to be reversed and we think the sort of initiatives taking place in Edinburgh are exactly what Dundee should be doing.”

“We frequently get many complaints from residents about street cleaning in the city which is simply not as good as it used to be.  The street sweeping staff do a really good job but there’s just not enough of them now. The staff numbers have declined year after year under the SNP.”

“The SNP has axed 39 posts in street cleaning since 2015 and environment management generally has lost significant staffing over that period. For example, the council’s Director of Neighbourhood Services has confirmed to us that grounds maintenance staff who maintain Dundee’s parks and open spaces has declined by 27 full time equivalent posts since 2015.”

 “We want a cleaner city – not litter lying, overflowing Eurobins, litter bins and dog bins. To achieve this we need to help existing staff with the load they already have by adding more street cleaning staff and taking the sort of imaginative steps that Edinburgh is taking to tackle the issue.”

His group colleague Broughty Ferry councillor Craig Duncan added :

“At this year’s council budget, the Liberal Democrats found the funding necessary to reinstate every single street cleaning post lost over the past 8 years.  We’d also have created new posts in forestry and animal control and add to the community safety warden and countryside ranger staff resource.”

“However, the SNP administration voted this down. The best the SNP can come up with is one-off short cleans in small areas over a couple of days that hasn’t gone near most of the city, one offs that have no long-term impact whatsoever. 

“It seems to be more about yet another photocall for an SNP councillor than getting to the root-cause of the issue – under-staffing and under-resourcing. Sadly, since the SNP got into government and took over the council administration, it’s been a landscape of cuts, cuts, cuts.”

The Edinburgh initiative sees around £530,000 to go on the new dedicated team of graffiti busters, which will see six new posts created with at least two specialist vehicles. They will focus on removing graffiti from public buildings, but with a longer-term ability to sell services to private building owners.

Special uplifts of bulky items, such as old sofas and unwanted furniture, will become free for families who receive council tax reduction. A total of £500,000 has been set aside for the initiative, which is expected to come into effect from October. 

In Dundee, in contrast, the SNP has hiked the bulky uplifts charge to £29 this year – unaffordable for many families.   The Dundee Liberal Democrats tried to have the charge cut by £9 but the SNP voted this down.

Councillor Coleman concluded:

 “In addition to streetscape improvements in Edinburgh, the City of Edinburgh Council’s Transport Committee agreed to the city’s biggest ever programme of investment to resurface 123 roads and 109 paths and pavements.”

“It is only happening because of a LibDem council budget got through the budget meeting and this delivered extra roads and pavements funds, money opposed by SNP councillors.”

“Here in Dundee at the council budget, the LibDems proposed £2 million extra this year for roads resurfacing and £1 million extra for footpaths improvements, but again the SNP voted this down and instead again cut the roads budget.”

“There really needs to be a laser-like focus on improving the streetscape and roads infrastructure in Dundee. It is badly needed.”