A JOINTLY funded twelve month partnership by CityCo and the Heart of Manchester BID (Business Improvement District) to clean up Manchester’s city centre shopping streets has used around 10,000 litres of water to jetwash 90,000 sq metres of pavement, equivalent to around twelve football pitches.
“The city centre has never been busier, so making sure it looks its best is a top priority for us"
The extensive £40,000 street clean, carried out by specialist contractor, Ramora, began in June this year and has so far removed nearly 800,000 pieces of chewing gum from pavements.
The work has been targeting the city’s retail core, hitting high footfall areas including Market Street, Deansgate, King St, St Ann’s Square, High Street and Portland Street as well as side streets such as Police Street, Spring Gardens and Tib Street Square.
Continuing well into next year, the scrub-up has been undertaken to make the city centre ship-shape for an increasing number of large crowd-drawing events such as Manchester’s various festivals, Vogue’s Fashion Night Out, Dig The City and the recent Christmas Markets.
Before and after jetwashing
Emma Cooke, Operations Manager for CityCo said: “This is additional funding which means we’ve been able to focus on the side streets as well as the main thoroughfares. Clean streets make a real difference to a city centre. People tend to have greater respect for the public realm and we find this reduces the dropping of litter, cigarette butts and gum.”
Councillor Pat Karney, Manchester City Council’s city centre spokesperson said: “The city centre has never been busier, so making sure it looks its best is a top priority for us. To have this extra resource from CityCo and the BID is fantastic. This is another great example of the public and private sector working together to make Manchester a better place for all to enjoy.”
Confidential thinks any initiative to clean up city centre streets should be applauded. However, having braved the city centre a number of times since the arrival of this year's Christmas Markets (and for months beforehand), we're certain that we're not the only ones thinking...where are all the bloody bins? £14.5m could buy us a fair few.
Blast the pavements, remove the gum. Brilliant. Well done. But if city centre bins are so wildly overfilled that any sparkling gum-free pavements are scattered with detritus then really, what is the point?
More bins needed. And quickly.
But, that aside, keep up the good work we say.
Bin liner replaced but litter left
