MANCHESTER has had a remarkable summer.
The success of the big Etihad Stadium gigs in June was followed by a superb Manchester International Festival in a gloriously sunny city. Combine these with all the amenity Manchester presently offers and we've had a packed city centre full of people enjoying themselves.
Administrations must react to the situation before them. If there is a problem it should be addressed. Appeals to dirty people who chuck litter are all well and good but it doesn't in the short term achieve anything.
Next week we’re putting up a story on Confidential called Tourism Audit which will highlight how good we have become as a tourist city.
Summer in the city
This is all very encouraging for the economy, for jobs and investment. But it's also important for those more abstract virtues of city morale; about feeling good about ourselves because we live in a dynamic city.
But as is the way with these things it's not all good news. We’re letting ourselves down over one of the basics.
City centre Manchester has been very, very mucky over the last few weeks.
The city buzz has made litter collection and street cleaning a real issue.
The bin's been emptied but the rubbish left all about - bad practice, was the street cleaner in a rush?
If you should happen to have been out in the late evening in, say, Piccadilly or Deansgate, especially at weekends, or at certain times in the late afternoons, or before 10am on weekend mornings, then you will have seen litter bins overflowing onto the street. The pavements stained with dropped coffee, coke, vomit and who knows what else.
Grubby two shoes
It's been ugly.
People socialising in the evening, or having stayed over in Manchester walking to stations and carparks on Saturday and Sunday mornings must walk over litter carpets.
Canal Street, Sunday morning, 10am
The stained streets, dramatically highlighted as pavements have dried in the hot weather, are just as big an eyesore as the litter.
Cllr Bernard Priest, Manchester City Council's executive member for neighbourhood services, said to Confidential: "We welcome the fact that Manchester International Festival and the recent good weather have brought thousands of people into the city centre, and we recognise the importance of clean streets to residents and visitors.
"We will be introducing new shift rotas before the end of July, following a lengthy process to amend staff working arrangements in order to meet the demands of one of the UK's busiest city centres.
"Due to successive unfair budget settlements, we now have drastically reduced resources but these new rotas will mean we will be using our resources in a much more efficient way. While we hope that residents will be able to see an improvement following these changes we will be closely monitoring how our streets look before deciding whether any more action is needed.
"We take our responsibilities to clean the city centre very seriously, but members of the public also need to behave responsibly by not dropping litter and I would like to call on Manchester Confidential readers to show their pride in the city by helping us keep the city litter-free."
Bless him for that call to arms with our readers but as these pictures show, the main problem is people not being able to fit their rubbish into the bins in the first place. Which is then spread by the wind and feet.
Nothing else will fit - not even a wafer thin After Eight
People are trying their best.
And in any case administrations must react to the situation before them. If there is a problem it should be addressed. Appeals to dirty people who chuck litter are all well and good but it doesn't in the short term achieve anything. Of course people should show more self-respect and consideration for others but if they don't then action has to be taken.
The new rotas later this month must take into account the way people use the city centre and not depend on outmoded notions of restrictive practice.
If contracts have to be varied then they must. Anybody who's lived in continental city centres knows that street cleaning takes place in the very early hours to get the streets ready for the day ahead. It's the only way the thing can get done properly.
What is particularly worrying is the council statement that while 'we do also have a programme of pavement washing in the city centre we are not able to clean every street on a weekly basis'. Or even tell us how frequently pavements are washed.
We'll monitor what's happening with some of the dirty streets shown on this page and try and give people an idea of progress with the new rotas, if any.
Yuck
Of course we live in straitened times with Manchester City Council having been whacked by Osborne's still-born austerity programme.
But poverty is no excuse for a dirty face. Maybe the council has to think of other ideas to maintain control over the basics in the city centre; volunteer programmes perhaps, street clearing teams of residents rampaging with brushes and litter grabbers through the streets.
Improbable. Perhaps. I'd definitely join in. And it's not as though there aren't some heroic amateurs out there already. Several noble souls in Castlefield and the Northern Quarter are doing their bit by helping clear the streets in their areas in their own time, gratis. We've got a profile of these good guys coming up soon.
Perhaps businesses should show more pride and civic commitment and hose down the areas outside their shops and offices. It's again what frequently happens in Mediterranean tourist hotspots and city centres.
Of course they'd complain about crippling rents and rates and that they're already paying into schemes such as Business Improvement District (BID), but as stated above, if there's a problem it has to be addressed.
There's no excuse in having a picnic and not clearing it up - residents and visitors should have a touch more self-respect
Meanwhile a key objective in Manchester’s current City Centre Strategic Plan is that the city centre ‘must establish (itself) in people’s minds as an exemplary location that is widely regarded as clean, safe, well-maintained and managed, and indeed stewarded; a place that is actively looked-after and cared-for’.
BID hosts with Cllr Pat KarneyGreat strides have been made with the introduction of city centre hosts in limited areas of retail Manchester (see BID link above) but the litter and stained street situation is unacceptable - and still at times terrible in the streets the hosts walk.
Anecdotally our Manchester mess is worse than in our competitor cities in the North and Midlands which is a crying shame given the summer we've had: a summer that shows, litter and filth aside, we're miles ahead when it comes to events and innovative ideas from both private and public sector.
Maybe we won't use this telephone
St Ann's Square at 6.20pm on a Saturday
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
