Wirral Council shortlisted for national award
Wirral Council has been shortlisted in this year’s ENCAMS Cleaner, Safer, Greener, network awards for work in partnership with ‘Together,’ the Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder group in tackling graffiti and fly tipping.
The annual event recognises the outstanding work undertaken by councils and other organisations to improve local environmental quality and reduce antisocial behaviour.
The winners will be announced in March at The National ENCAMS Conference in Brighton. Winners from the awards will become Network ambassadors and showcase their projects as best practice for other organisations.
Councillor Jean Quinn Wirral’s Cabinet Member for Streetscene & Transport Services commented,
“This award nomination is wonderful news. It recognises the dedication, hard work and successful partnership working to create a cleaner and pleasant environment for residents and visitors to Wirral.”
“As well as improving the Streetscene so much in some areas, this scheme has promoted civic pride and contributed to restorative justice and the rehabilitation of offenders.”
Together’s graffiti team have removed over 8000 square meters of graffiti on Wirral since the new service started just 7 months ago and the Council is now considered to be a top performer when compared to other metropolitan borough Councils with regards to its approach to tackling graffiti.
The partnership, made up of Wirral Council’s Streetscene team, Wirral’s Anti Social Behaviour team and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, also engages in preventative work, including visiting secondary schools to raise awareness of the consequences of graffiti, and tracking down regular “taggers”.
Since July 08, the Wirral’s Anti Social Behaviour team has visited 11 of the 22 main stream secondary schools on the Wirral to educate over 12,000 pupils on the environmental cost of graffiti and the consequences for offenders. Pupils are made aware of local graffiti tags, the cost of removal, how graffiti tags are identified and the consequences for offenders.
An innovative Programme has just been launched in Egremont and Seacombe involving residents in identifying graffiti in their own area. Where practical, residents remove graffiti by hand using removal kits supplied by the partnership. Any larger incidents of graffiti are then reported to the graffiti squad and prioritised for removal.
The partnership also works together to improve grot spots across the borough, often where land ownership is not known. This is having a positive impact on the general cleanliness standards and is helping the Council to meet challenging targets set by the Government for environmental quality.
The cleaner, safer, greener network is a high-profile national programme run by ENCAMS (formerly the Keep Britain Tidy Group). It helps local councils, social landlords and town centre managers improve local environmental quality.
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