Oldham bosses agree to spend £1m tackling fly-tipping and litter - but will end deep cleaning of all alleys and roads?

28.09.2022 - 10:01 / manchestereveningnews.co.uk

Bosses have agreed to spend £1m tackling fly-tipping and litter in Oldham but will end a scheme of deep cleaning all Oldham alleys and roads.

The ‘Don’t Trash Oldhan’ project was launched by the council in September last year with the aim of removing fly-tipped waste and litter from all of the borough’s wards.

Since it began, staff have cleaned more than 4,000 streets and alleyways, removing 284 tonnes of waste.

It led to 381 fixed penalty notices being issued to people who had been found to have dumped rubbish, and 44 people were prosecuted for offences in court, with costs of £26,000 being awarded. There are still 77 residents awaiting legal proceedings.

However at the first annual review of the programme, members of Oldham’s cabinet agreed to end the ward by ward deep-clean approach.

READ MORE:The Mancunian Way: Justice in crisis

In their report, officers stated that repeating the work of last year was ‘not enough to encourage people to do the right thing’ as it was felt people would wait to dump their rubbish ahead of the publicised clean-up.

Instead bosses say they want to focus on changing people’s behaviour around fly-tipping and littering going forward.

They have agreed to deliver targeted interventions at 29 hotspots for fly-tipping, including audits of bins and environment marshals potentially serving legal notices on property owners.

Chiefs will also use mobile CCTV units that can be installed in rural locations to monitor areas known to be rife for waste dumping.

Alongside this, the council has agreed to operate a ‘betterment’ programme of activity to get communities to be responsible for their own neighbourhoods.

Street cleaning council staff would be redeployed into two teams in the north and south of the