LAST WEEK we published a story called Mucky Manchester about the state of the streets in the city we love. To say it received a lot of reaction is putting it mildly.
The city centre has come a long way, it has become an excellent destination for visitors, a great place to live and work, but how long can Manchester wait for such a basic, ostensibly simple aspect of civic life as street cleanliness and litter collection to improve?
In the story we quoted the council on how they were changing rotas in response to the problem of litter clearance.
Now we have the details.
Councillor Bernard Priest, Manchester City Council's executive member for neighbourhood services, told Confidential: “Under the new rotas, we now have members of the twelve strong night shift team working between midnight and 7.30am on weekend nights, and between 10.30-6am on weekday nights.
"Manchester is a city visited by half a million people every week, with a vibrant and growing night time economy, and while we will be closely monitoring the success of the new rotas, this is only one aspect of dealing with the issues in the city centre. We have also just purchased some additional bins and these will be going out into areas of high footfall already identified as needing more bins over the next few weeks.
"Changing peoples attitude and behaviour in the city remains important for all of us, particularly where resources are limited and we are planning a long term campaign to raise people’s awareness, challenge their behaviour and encourage a more responsible attitude.
“We look forward to working closely with Manchester Confidential and its readers on this project which is very important, both to ourselves and the city’s residents, visitors and businesses.”
And as Manchester's most read city centre based magazine we'll of course be very willing to help.
But there is a problem with the shift team working through the night cleaning the streets.
It's very very small.
The twelve strong team means effectively there are never more than nine people out cleaning the city centre.
Here are some rough (back-of-a-fag-packet carelessly discarded in the street) figures.
If there are 500,000 people coming in every week then that makes an average of just under 71,500 people per day.
That's an average figure.
We know from previous figures that on weekend nights, festival occasions, big matches and gigs this figure can bloat to upwards of 100,000 people.
No wonder the litter piles up.
Worse than that no wonder the litter spreads from overflowing bins across streets and down alleys.
Sir Richard Leese, the council leader, has on many occasions talked of how the city centre is the economic heart of the region.
Of course it is. The region whithers without it.
How long was it before this was cleaned up?
There are many ways the city centre can prosper and attract investment and that includes attention to detail, getting the little things right. Getting the little things right, in the end, contributes to jobs.
The council, to be fair, has made it clear that the new rotas are just part of a package of changes that are going to be introduced over the next year or so.
We all have to acknowledge that the Council has had to implement swingeing government cuts and clearly went too far in this area - which they now recognise - so are now readjusting and reprioritising.
Good.
But this problem is a problem right now.
The city centre has come a long way, it has become an excellent destination for visitors, a great place to live and work, but how long can Manchester wait for such a basic, ostensibly simple aspect of civic life as street cleanliness and litter collection to improve?
Whenever you walk into a dirty unkempt house you notice it. Whenever you see a person who isn't looking after themselves you notice it. Having just nine people, at any one time during the night cleaning the streets means the attention to detail when it comes to presenting a clean face must inevitably fail. Do we really want to be the dirty city of the North?
It looks unlikely given the numbers coming into the city that these new rotas will significantly ease Manchester's city centre cleanliness. Of course Manchester Confidential and all our readers would love to see it work.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
Messy and overflowing
