Liverpool Council is increasing its street cleaning efforts as tyre marks from Just Eat and Deliveroo delivery riders add to the challenge of keeping the city centre clean. The ECHO revealed earlier this month that some key hotspots in the heart of town have not had a proper wash in the last 10 years.
Decade without a thorough scrub
Cllr Liam Robinson, leader of Liverpool Council, said “key areas” at the heart of Liverpool had not had a good scrub for a decade. The Labour group chief put this down to the funding challenges the local authority has faced in the last 15 years.
He said that while Liverpool had a “beautiful” city centre, there was a “constant battle” to keep it looking tidy. Now the growth in delivery drivers gathering in town is providing another challenge, according to city officials.
New investment and teams
In a bid to give the whole city a spruce up, Liverpool Council’s cabinet signed off on increased investment in neighbourhood services, with 100 new positions recruited since April. This includes manual barrow walker routes.
Paul Murphy, director of environment, streetcare and recycling, told a meeting of the council’s sustainable, safe and thriving neighbourhoods committee that street cleansing was one of the only services the council provides where “the team can do a brilliant job, leave the street and two minutes later it looks like they haven’t done their job and everyone’s complaining they haven’t done their job.”
Late night cleaning and changing challenges
Mr Murphy said the authority was moving towards a “place-based, demand-led approach” towards street cleaning. This includes increasing late night street cleansing until 1am, seven days a week. The director said this helps to meet the demand generated by night time economy pressures in the city centre, such as St Patrick’s Day. Similar issues have arisen around Anfield owing to the number of visitors to the stadium, leaving it requiring a more intense clean.
On street washing, Cllr Robinson told the ECHO a specific team would be focusing on the key areas where there’s high footfall such as outside Lime Street Station, Williamson Square and Church Street. Mr Murphy said 12 new jobs had been created to cover a full weekly service. Teams are being split into two with a dedicated city centre team and a responsive unit.
The director set out how the changing face of the city’s night time economy and people’s culinary choices were impacting on how his teams were having to keep things tidy. He said: “What that allows is the city centre to look better.
“We’ve seen this summer when we had several weeks of no rain, they’re the team who are getting dragged everywhere to deal with the different challenges and the challenges are changing. It’s not just the bird droppings et cetera, you’ve also got the Just Eat, Deliveroo bikes that go all over the pavement leaving marks everywhere, the night time economy is as popular as ever, so the need for a street washing service in the city centre is probably a few years overdue.”
The reactive team will have capacity to visit locations outside the city centre and all the bridges across the city on a regular basis to deal with issues relating to bird droppings.
Delivery firms respond
A Just Eat spokesperson said: “We work with independent couriers in cities across the UK and we send regular updates about being respectful of local communities, including safe driving behaviours. While we haven’t been contacted specifically about the impact of bike tyres we’re always happy to hear from community leaders and discuss their concerns.”
Deliveroo did not respond to requests for comment.
