Greenwich Council is promising to spend £5 million on a fly-tipping crackdown as the ruling Labour group gets ready for its most difficult election in decades.
The cash, to be spent over the next four and a half years, is part of a package of spending promises being announced by the council, with just six months to go until the poll on May 7 next year.
The number of enforcement teams will be doubled, new CCTV will be installed, offenders will be named and shamed, while rewards will be offered for residents who help the council catch offenders.
While the council still faces the prospect of further steep spending cuts – and residents face paying more in charges and fees to compensate – this cash comes from one-off funds such as cash from developers, government grants, land sales and other windfalls that are not part of the council’s regular income.
The outlay was approved by the council’s cabinet earlier this month, along with £2.2 million for the borough’s three main town centres – Greenwich, Woolwich and Eltham – and £4.3 million to beef up the borough’s team of community safety officers. Another £8 million will go towards resurfacing roads and there will be £2.4 million for the borough’s culture strategy.
Some big-ticket projects are also included: £24 million for a primary school for children with special needs, and £12.3 million for a facility for young adults with special needs. However, little detail about these initiatives have been made public, not even in papers that the cabinet voted on.
Instead, announcements about these are being drip-fed each week with an eye on an election where Labour faces being squeezed by both right and left in what could be the toughest poll since 1968, when Labour lost the council to the Conservatives for three years.
Labour sources have suggested that fly-tipping not being cleaned up outside a polling station on the Barnfield Estate in Plumstead was partly blamed for the loss of one of its safest wards – Shooters Hill – to the Greens in a by-election in June. Responsibility for environmental services was later taken away from Averil Lekau, the deputy leader, and given to Jackie Smith, the cabinet member for business and the economy.
While the Greens will challenge Labour in the north, the party also faces threats from both the Tories and Reform in the south of the borough.
Council leader Anthony Okereke will be hoping the fly-tipping announcement, a snappy “getting things done” slogan and some sweary language will grab voters’ attention.
“Fly-tipping is lazy and criminal, and we’re not putting up with this shit any more,” he said in a statement.
“We’re collecting around 841 tonnes of dumped rubbish a year, which costs our residents over £800,000 a year. That is the equivalent of 50 double decker buses – that’s unacceptable when the vast majority of residents do the right thing and keep the borough clean.
“We’ve heard loud and clear from residents that you’re sick of fly-tipping in our borough – and so are we.”
Smith said the council would also be improving its bulky waste collection service, which costs £13.31 per item, but did not give details of how. Neighbouring Lewisham agreed last week to cut its charge from £14 to £5.
Flytipping, litter and waste services have previously been easy targets for cuts: in 2020, under Danny Thorpe, the previous leader, “taskforce teams” that dealt with flytipping in the worst-hit parts of the borough were cut by half to save £180,000.
And only last year, cuts were approved that will mean residents having to pay for garden waste to be collected – as they do in Greenwich’s three neighbouring boroughs – and street sweeping being cut back in many roads. However, those cuts have yet to take effect, with council officers still working out which streets should have less sweeping.At a council meeting last month, Smith urged residents to complain if they thought their street was not being swept properly.
Charlie Davis, a Conservative councillor for Eltham Town and the deputy leader of the opposition, said: ” ‘Over six months ago, we made tackling anti-social behaviour and fly-tipping the centrepiece of our amendment to the council’s budget, which was rejected by the Labour administration. We’ve now lost over half a year in which these issues could have been prioritised.
“It is good to see Greenwich Labour have belatedly come round to prioritising the issues that matter most of local residents, but let’s not pretend this isn’t anything other than a naked attempt by this tired and directionless Labour administration to try and avert electoral disaster next May.”
Updated at 1.15pm with a quote from Charlie Davis.
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