Edinburgh needs a zero-tolerance approach to littering and over-flowing bins – Iain Whyte

Bins and street cleaning are two of the most basic things that councils do.

Litter problems tend to grow unless dealt with quickly

It’s a universal service that every council provides and everyone uses. You see the results around you. So why do we have so many problems with these basics in Edinburgh?

The blame falls on the SNP and Labour politicians who have been in charge together for ten years. Their failure to keep an eye on the basics and their dogmatic approach have seen regular crises with missed bin collections, overflowing communal bins and a plummeting recycling rate.

Last year, in the run-up to COP26, Glasgow was being widely derided as filthy by journalists. But Edinburgh’s streets were officially dirtier. If you live in north-east Edinburgh it will be no surprise as here the situation is even worse.

The SNP-led council’s answer is “bin hubs”. Apparently, it’s “the biggest improvement to recycling and waste facilities in decades”. Yet on the ground the experience from the trial areas isn’t good.

Many have become locations for indiscriminate dumping. They are often graffitied and surrounded by litter. The bins are rarely kept in the correct place and the whole thing looks just as much of a mess as before. When they are burnt out, the best you might expect is a new lid, rarely a repaint or new bin. Now the wider roll-out seems to be happening at a glacial pace. Service as usual.

Little wonder that residents of the New Town and Stockbridge are 90 per cent opposed to the imposition of bin hubs in the World Heritage Site. They use gull-proof sacks, copied from Bath’s similar World Heritage Site, in many streets to avoid the need for large bins in an architecturally sensitive area. All to be scrapped.

Meanwhile our heritage bodies are united in saying they weren’t properly consulted about bin hubs and their suggestions for improvement were ignored.

The lack of consultation is familiar to other areas too with an angry resident in Piershill even taking an angle-grinder to the hubs. The council didn’t speak to them before locating multiple overflowing bins outside their windows and now says change is impossible.

To improve cleanliness, we need a “broken windows” approach. Deep clean the areas around bins regularly as heritage bodies have suggested. Prosecute those who fly-tip, litter, or graffiti. Clean up straight away when things are dumped.

Council staff work hard but it lets the whole organisation down when the bins are put back incorrectly, and staff appear to ignore litter and fly-tipping because they are emptying a different sort of bin. It needs a comprehensive approach to drive up standards and encourage residents to do the right thing, backed up with a zero-tolerance stance for the few who don’t.

Unfortunately, with this council you get what they deem acceptable and you are meant to be happy with it. All designed for the council’s convenience not yours. The only zero tolerance shown is to dissent.

I would change all that. It’s time we listened to residents who care about their local neighbourhoods and staff who have innovative ideas to improve our services. But it’s only you who can decide to make these local issues the top of the agenda at the council elections in May.

Councillor Iain Whyte is leader of Edinburgh Council’s Conservative group

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.