Blitz on litter and grime to prepare for City of Culture

Extra wardens, graffiti removal officers and street sweepers will be part of the two-year programme to make the city look its best for the 12-month long celebration.

It will be funded by an extra £1.8m for the Council’s waste and environmental services, and involve staff working from 6am until late in the evening.

As well as tackling littering and vandalism, the blitz will also advise city centre businesses on the best way to keep their premises attractive.

The push was mentioned at a meeting of Bradford Council’s Regeneration and Environment Scrutiny Committee, when members were given an update on fly-tipping and waste services in the district.

The Telegraph & Argus understands the extra cash has come from the £10m funding allocated to City of Culture by Bradford Council in recent years.

It is part of a wider push to prepare the district for 2025 – when Bradford is expected to attract a huge number of visitors from across the country.

The city centre blitz is expected to begin this Summer.

Giving councillors an update on waste services in the district, Richard Galthen, Head of Waste and Fleet Services at Bradford Council, said: “We’re in the early stages of City of Culture preparations.

“We’ve secured £1.8m of funding to improve the city centre, and that push is starting in June. It will be a two-year project dedicated to improving the city centre.

“The funding will support a mix of public space protection officers, wardens, gardeners, street sweepers and a graffiti removal warden.”

Members were told that the city centre team would operate from 6am to 10pm, with Mr Galthen adding: “Hopefully that means when people go out at night they will see that the city has been much cleaner than it has been in the past.”

Graffiti on the Grade II listed former Santander building in the city centre (Image: T&A)

Councillor Alex Mitchell (Lab, Queensbury) said: “It’s good you’ve got the extra money for City of Culture, but what happens after the year ends?”

Mr Galthen said the plan was for the extra investment to create a “legacy.”

He said: “They’ll all be ready to start this June. The funding is time sensitive, but I hope after the period ends, our teams will have a better way of working.”

Preparations for 2025 were raised earlier in the same meeting during a discussion on fly-tipping in the district.

Councillor Rosie Watson (Green, Shipley) pointed out that while the Council could clear up fly-tipping from streets, parks and public areas, it had no powers to clear waste from private sites.

She said: “There is a lot of waste and fly-tipping that isn’t on Council land, or on places like the side of rail lines.

“What powers do we have to enforce the clearing up of private land?”

Richard Westerman, Environmental Enforcement Officer, said: “It depends on what is on the land. If it is just overgrown it might be something we speak to planning colleagues about.

Alcohol tins and drinks bottles on land off Westgate (Image: T&A)

“If it is worse, then we could serve a notice to the landowner. If they default on that we could take them to court. There are costs involved with that. If they still refuse to work with us we can carry out work ourselves, but the danger is that money comes out of the Council’s pocket, and it could take a long time to get that money back.”

The Council has previously said it was in discussions with other landowners such as Network Rail to try and clean up non-Council land in the run up to 2025.

On the same night as the meeting, a number of “runway” events to prepare the district for City of Culture were unveiled.

They include Les Girafes, a free parade through the city centre led by seven huge giraffe puppets that will take place on Saturday, August 24.

On a walk around Bradford city centre on Thursday, the T&A noticed:

• A pile of old shirts and a dryer left on the pavement in Piccadilly, next to overflowing communal bins

• Graffiti on the Grade II listed former Santander building on Darley Street

• Piles of alcohol cans on a piece of land off Westgate