New Environmental Contract: What Changes Will Be Made to the Street Cleaning Service?

This will change from a frequency based contract to an output based contract, which means that it will be cleaned to meet and maintain the required standard. If it falls below the required standard, there are set times within which this must be rectified, or financial penalties will be imposed on the Contractor.

Every street in Charnwood has been categorised into a zone, labelled 1, 2, 3 or 4. These zones have been set according to the Environmental Protection Act (1990) Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse, and depend on the level of usage of particular areas. For example, a town centre street is heavily used, is likely to be more heavily littered, so will be a zone 1; a rural road is far less heavily used, is likely to be littered less, so will be a zone 4.

Each of the four zones has associated ‘response’ times set out in the Code of Practice. It is within these times that an area should be returned to an acceptable level of cleanliness, although the Contractor should aim to maintain an acceptable level of cleanliness at all times.

The level of cleanliness is categorised using a grading system of A to D, whereby A shows that an area has very little or no litter or detritus, through to D which is heavily littered with significant accumulations of litter or detritus.

For more information, please refer to the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse, which is available here: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/quality/local/litter/code/documents/cop-litter.pdf