Meanwhile, back in Marylebone, a couple of evenings ago, I encountered my neighbour out on the street, washing down the pavement in front of her house as if we were in Montpellier rather than Marylebone. I didn't get a chance to quiz her about her actions, but it was as if she had noticed that our street has become too grubby recently, and had decided to take matters into her own hands?
Following this encounter, and a recent series of letters and emails that I received from concerned members, about an apparent deterioration in street cleanliness, I wrote to the Council Cabinet Member for City Management Edward Argar about this matter. He responded as follows:
I'm afraid that in respect of street cleansing, there have had to be changes to sweeping frequencies etc (contained in the March budget, and implemented in the early summer), the main one being a 49% reduction in weekend street sweeping in residential streets - I hasten to add that this refers to the city-wide picture and the specifics vary from area to area within the city. While this is something which I regretted having to do, as I am sure you will appreciate with savings of £60m across the council as a whole (out of an annual budget of c. £250m) being necessary as a result of reductions in our funding by central government, in turn necessitated by their plans to tackle the deficit left by the last government, while we strove to minimise anyimpacts on front-line services, it was inevitable that there would have to be some changes. In making some of these savings from the more expensive weekend shifts, it meant that we were able to keep reductions on weekday street sweeping in residential streets to just 12%, and minimise the changes to evening sweeping services.
I appreciate that you may have both concerns and feedback as to impact and how this is working on the ground in specific streets within the area the Association covers, so if you wish, as I have done with some other Residents' Associations, I am very happy if to meet up with you/go on a walkabout in your area with you and Ward Councillors to discuss the issues/changes as the relate specifically to the Marylebone Association area, and to see whether there are any specific issues that have arisen that we could address by tweaking the changes as implemented on the ground, without affecting the necessary overall savings delivered.
Our own Traffic and City Management subcommittee chair, Michael Bolt writes in response to this:
"Implementation of the current phase of savings on street cleansing services continues to progress well" we are told by Westminster. If by this they mean that they are saving money by not sweeping most of our streets over weekends then it is progressing very well. If however Westminster wish to honour their commitment to "continue to protect the high standards of cleanliness for which Westminster has rightly gained an international reputation", then progress is less good.
In Marylebone, regular weekend street sweeping has been reduced to a bare minimum; that is, Marylebone High Street, Baker Street, Wigmore Street and Great Portland Street. More minor thoroughfares such as Harley Street now have to tolerate the sight of rubbish blowing around them all weekend. Not a very impressive introduction to one of London's world famous streets for the many visitors we will have next year.
Whilst of course we are aware that cuts need to be made we feel that they need to be better prioritised. It's all very well spending large sums of money decluttering Westminster's streets of surplus signage and furniture etc, but there is little point if the same streets are going to be covered in rubbish. Surely if cuts have to be made Westminster could look elsewhere first, maybe the very expensive CCTV upgrade could be put on hold to help pay for a decent level of cleaning.
Could it be that we are effectively being asked by City of Westminster to do as my neighbour, adopt the Mediterranean model, and to pick up our brooms, mops and buckets to look after the patch of footpath in front of our own buildings from time to time?
Please do get in touch and let us know what you think about this, so that when we meet with Councillor Argar to discuss this matter we have a broad range of views from our membership
