Clean Sweep for City Street Services
The latest Local Environment Quality Report issued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has awarded top marks to Winchester City Council for its standard of street cleanliness.
The City Council’s standards for dealing with graffiti, fly-posting and fly-tipping received top marks in the report, whilst its litter cleansing standards also scored highly.
The report describes graffiti, fly-tipping and fly-posting as "signal crimes" which, when dealt with effectively, send out strong messages to deter criminals and make residents feel more secure from anti-social behaviour.
Overall, the City Council scored above the national average with regard to the number of Good and Satisfactory scores it achieved in the report.
Robert Heathcock, the City Council’s Head of Environment, said: "We are pleased with these results and they serve to highlight the hard work that has gone into tackling these issues; but we won’t be resting on our laurels and we aim to build on these results for the future"
Cllr Frank Pearson, Portfolio Holder for Environment, added: "These results are very encouraging and I’m delighted that we have achieved a number of top marks. I hope these successes will act as a benchmark so that we can maintain our strong performance in these areas whilst also continuing to improve upon our overall performance."