City cleans up its act for best ever rating

Published on Tuesday 30 December 2008 09:09

THE Capital's streets are getting cleaner and that's official.

The city has received its best annual cleanliness rating from independent inspectors Keep Scotland Beautiful.

Inspectors awarded Edinburgh an average score of 70 under the Cleanliness Index Monitoring System (CIMS), the highest annual average since monitoring began in 2000.

The council said the score showed the Capital's streets are getting cleaner but there remains evidence some areas of the city continue to lag behind.

Inspectors carry out four surveys each year of the city's streets, providing an assessment described as a "snapshot" of the litter levels over a four-week period. The inspectors examine a 50-metre section on ten per cent of the city's streets and grade them from A to D, where A represents no litter and D represents "major accumulations".

Councillor Robert Aldridge, the city's environment leader, said: "It is heartening to see that we have year-on-year improvement on how clean the city is. We are delighted that 2008 is the best year yet.

"This administration is investing in street cleaning and these scores reflect the real progress being made. We have more environmental wardens, continue to have educational initiatives, and have reorganised the way we clean our streets so we can be more responsive to local communities and neighbourhoods."

He added: "We are determined that our ratings continue to improve and are in the process of introducing a range of measures to achieve this. These include identifying and concentrating on litter hotspots, specific programmes to deal with fast food litter and litter around the city's schools, as well as improved street sweeping and jet cleaning around refuse containers."

In September, inspectors said a number of areas of the city were continuing to fall below the "acceptable" score of 67, with Leith Walk in particular picking up a score of just 59. They said the council wards of Forth, Sighthill/Gorgie, Meadows/Morningside, the city centre, Leith Walk, Leith and Craigentinny/Duddingston had all failed to meet the minimum cleanliness rating.

Charlotte Encombe, of environmental group Greener Leith, said only by handing out more fines would the council stop people dropping litter.

She said: "Leith is still notoriously bad for litter. The level of litter is much greater than other parts of the city.

"People know dropping litter is wrong, but we need more enforcement.

"We need to hit people in their pockets. The council is working hard, and it's making a real effort to improve things, but only by handing out more fines will we see a difference."

Earlier this year, it emerged that the number of calls to the Capital's street cleaning services had risen by 47 per cent over the last year to almost 200 a month.