Environmental factors such as clean streets and fly-tipping were important discussion points in Salford City Council’s meeting.
On Wednesday 26th February Salford City Council held a budget meeting.
In the meeting Salford Mayor Paul Dennett talked about how important looking after the environment was to the people of Salford, “Residents also routinely tell us that essential services such as street cleansing, highways maintenance, the upkeep of our parks and the city’s amazing open spaces are things that matter the most to them.”
The Mayor also announced that he is putting, “an additional investment of £585,000 into our street cleansing function.”
He spoke about all this needing “a more dedicated team to more proactively remove fly-tipping, invest in behaviour changes and promote activities to encourage reduction, reuse, recycling across the city.”
He explained how greater use of CCTV could be used to capture when necessary people who repeat fly-tip and how more on-street bins plus the use of bin technology could help bins to be collected when they are full.
The Mayor went on to express how he wanted all people who either work, live or visit Salford to, “absolutely be proud of our great city.”
Council Budget day&Salford Labour got together this morning to draw attention to the government's so called 'Fair Funding Review' where Salford loses £8.5m, whilst wealthy Tory shires gain massively. BoJo's own area of Uxbridge is set to gain £9m, Surrey +£24m & Hampshire+£35m. pic.twitter.com/jz7ynZL8Ni
— Sharmina August (@SharAugust) February 26, 2020
Councillor David Lancaster MBE talked about bin collections saying that, “To go back to a fortnightly black bin collection it cost an extra £2.9 million.”
He went on to explain that to go back to a weekly collection it would cost £6.9 million.
“Recycling if you want to encourage it, which is what we ought to be doing, you shouldn’t be encouraging black bin collection for everything going back into one bin because it would not work and you wouldn’t get the recycling rates that you’ve currently got.
“40% recycling rate is not good enough. What we ought to be doing is pressing for the maximum recycling rates.”
The Revenue budget and capital programme outlines the 2020/21 strategy of the council, showing what they are putting into place.
In this programme, it is said that The Place Service Group’s budget over the last six years has been reduced by £22m.
It is said that The Place Service Group’s “remit is to drive forward the council’s economic growth agenda through economic regeneration and to deliver services that touch almost every aspect of residents’ daily lives, from highly visible activities like bin collections and street cleaning to issuing various licenses and other regulatory work.”
Also in the programme, Michael Hemingway (Principal Officer Climate Change) said that, “The revenue and capital budget supports the Council’s efforts to both mitigate and adapt to climate change in line with the council’s commitments through the 5 Year Environment Plan for Greater Manchester and in the light of the Climate Emergency the council declared in July 2019.
“The budget is supporting capital works to retrofit LED lighting; Install PV on council buildings; Support the Unlocking Clean Energy in GM programme which will see Salford CC develop a solar farm and hydro-electric Scheme and supports energy efficiency improvements in homes through the affordable warmth programme.
“The budget also supports adaptation to deal with more extreme weather made more likely because of Climate Change including Flood Risk Management.”
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