Minutes:
Councillor G Lee, a Member from Darlington Borough Council and Chairman of Litter Free Durham was in attendance to talk to Members about the Big Spring Clean.
He thanked the authority for supporting litter and asked for Members support to help with the Big Spring Clean.
He also thanked the teams for their enthusiasm and help they had provided over the years.
In 2015, 275 litter picks had taken place which involved 2,000 people and over 2,000 bags of waste had been collected. The Environment Agency had also collected 4 tonnes of waste from rivers.
The litter picks had saved the authority £31,000, so there was a financial advantage from the Big Spring Clean.
He asked Members that they help raise awareness and educate people. Litter impacted on the environment, wildlife and the image of County Durham and Darlington. Ideally he would like a constant message to be sent and fed into the general public from government but this was not going to happen.
He asked that Members considered making this part of the school curriculum so that they there was a constant message, this could be one hour per year for each year group and everyone would see the benefits.
5 out of 14 priorities were for litter and fines were issued for dog fouling and a solution would be to employ a professional company who could issue fixed penalty notices for litter. £5 million was spent in Durham on street cleaning and £1.5 million in Darlington.
Members know the hot spots and he appealed to Councillors to speak to their community and join or book a litter pick. If people pick litter up they are unlikely to drop it again. The Big Spring Clean starts on 29 February 2016 to 17 April 2016 and was supported by the Northern Echo, Environment Agency, Schools and Community Groups.
The Chairman thanked Councillor Lee for his update which they would take back to Officers. She also indicated that she had held litter picks in her area and many of the Members were also school governors.
Councillor Armstrong indicated that Durham County Council already undertook 99% of what Councillor Lee was asking. He indicated that they needed to go through school governor support to get the message into schools. The area action partnerships priorities were litter and dog fouling but a professional company brought in would be at a cost when times were hard with redundancies and these jobs could be given to staff. Community teams were already doing a fantastic job.
The Chairman thanked Councillor Lee and Officers for their attendance and a great job.
Resolved: That the update be noted.