Councillor warns of further issues over fly-tipping in Govanhill

More council staff are needed to help clean up Govanhill, according to a councillor who said the area’s community continued to battle littering and fly-tipping.

Councillor Elaine Gallagher has been reaching out to MSPs to ask the government for more money for Glasgow City Council’s cleansing department.And she suggested “One hundred extra cleansing staff would help a lot.” The Scottish Greens politician would also like to see more interpretation staff speaking to people whose first language is not English to raise awareness about the bin system.

Councillor Gallagher said the council’s neighbourhood, regeneration and sustainability department “needs far more manpower than they have.” Councillor Gallagher added: “When we have the place clean and neat there is an incentive to keeping it clean.”

The Southside Central councillor hopes to help get more funding to obtain “manpower to clean the place so people can feel prouder to keep it clean.” She added: “The community need to come together with the council to look after the place they live in.”

Issues include landlords stripping flats and dumping materials and people not being up to speed with the bin services operating or how they work. Instead of paying for a bulky uplift from the council some people leave items by bins instead. Back courts are also used as a dumping ground for waste but as the council don’t own them it is not responsible for lifting the rubbish. Privately owned lanes have also been targeted.

A recent boost for residents will see gates installed at notorious rubbish hotspot Kingarth Lane between Calder Street and Allison Street following an appeal. Yesterday the private lane was strewn with mattresses, a toilet and other waste discarded by flytippers – as the community awaits the gates being added.

The Southside Central area partnership, chaired by councillor Gallagher, has decided to award up to £40,000 to use mobile and fixed location CCTV for flytipping. The partnership will also spend £20,000 of the central infrastructure fund refreshing lines on the roads of restricted parking zones.

Councillor Gallagher said the neighbourhood has had issues with double parking. The council have taken on 40 permanent staff in refuse collection and are recruiting workers for street cleansing. Recent statistics show Glasgow’s bill for street cleaning is higher than most other local authorities. The cost of cleaning grime from roads per 1000 people worked out at £25.94 per resident according to 2020 to 2021 data.