Tory councillors declare city wide 'cleansing crisis'

The Glasgow Conservatives say the city is in the grips of a cleansing crisis thanks to rising levels of graffiti and fly tipping and bin collection changes.

They are raising a motion at today's full council meeting calling for urgent action to be taken to address the city's rubbish issues.

It comes after proposals they made to tackle cleansing in the city's budget were voted down by other councillors earlier this month.

Glasgow was voted the "UK's fly-tipping capital" in 2020.

Glasgow City Council's SNP administration says their cleansing teams are doing the best they can in an unprecedented situation and their resources have been used as effectively as possible during the Covid-19 pandemic.

                                                                                                                                                                                                         The Conservative party motion going to council today reads: "This Council notes and affirms its strong concerns at the cleansing, roads and streetscene crisis that Glasgow is currently experiencing and believes that urgent action must be taken to clean up our city.

"We commend and applaud the hard work of Council staff over the pandemic and note reports that trade union representatives of our cleansing workforce have labelled Glasgow's streets as a "warzone" - filled with litter and rats. Council notes that the claims of staff that they are unable to cope with the masses of litter being dumped across our city's streets came only months after it was revealed that Glasgow has the fourth highest population of rats in the United Kingdom.

"Council wishes to thank all those volunteers in neighbourhoods across Glasgow who work hard to keep their areas clean and tidy and assist Council staff by carrying out litter picks, reporting environmental problems and supporting their neighbours.

"This Council notes the comments of the Leader of the Council in which she is quoted asking for Glaswegians to "step up to the mark" to alleviate the unacceptable state of waste and debris in our streets. Council considers that, although personal responsibility and education are vitally important, it is not the responsibility of members of the public to conduct basic cleansing functions because Glasgow City Council has failed to adequately do so.

"This Council believes that the recent changes to cleansing, including charging for bulk uplifts and the 3-weekly bin collection will only make the present situation worse and that urgent action must be taken to tackle the present state of Glasgow's streets.

"This Council believes that Glasgow's unenviable position as the fly-tipping capital of the UK is shameful and that as we recover from COVID-19, we must tackle this problem head on.

"Council notes that the number of illegal waste disposals has steadily increased over the period that the current SNP minority administration has been in power and last year reached all-time highs. Council further notes recent reports that Glasgow failed to refer a single fly-tipping report to the Procurator Fiscal over a 2-year period at a time when it received over a third of all fly-tipping reports recorded in the whole of Scotland.

"This Council agrees that the strategy of the SNP minority administration has failed in this area and that Glasgow urgently needs new leadership and a new strategy on this vital area.

"Council believes that Glaswegians have a right to expect their streets to be litter-free, fly-tipping free and regularly maintained.

"Therefore, this Council resolves to demand a report in no more than 3 months to the City Administration Committee which details an action plan with clear targets, timelines and resources to clean up Glasgow's streets including how we will ensure streets are regularly swept and maintained, roads are repaired in a timely manner, how we will ensure domestic, commercial and street litter bins are regularly emptied and how we will tackle Glasgow's fly-tipping problem."

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