A leading councillor has called for “outside the box” ideas to finally get on top of the long-running scourge of litter and fly-tipping in back lanes across the West End of Newcastle
Sergeant Le-Anne Beard of Northumbria Police, Coun Irim Ali, Newcastle City Council Environmental Protection Manager Roy Harris, and Community Safety Support Officers Dee Roberts and Shiva Martha. (Image: Newcastle City Council. )
Businesses in Newcastle’s West End are being urged to lead by example in tackling a back lane litter crisis. The state of back lanes across areas like Benwell, Elswick, and Fenham has been a long-standing problem for years, with the sight of overflowing communal bins and huge piles of fly-tipped rubbish becoming all too familiar.
Shocking video footage last month showed young children playing in a rat-infested back lane, while Newcastle City Council later complained that areas were becoming covered in waste within just 24 hours of being completely cleaned up by local authority workers. Local businesses are now being asked to step up and help deliver a major behaviour change to finally deal with the scourge.
The council is launching a new Wingrove Business Forum, a platform for businesses and civic centre bosses to speak to each other and work together for the betterment of the West End. Coun Irim Ali, the council’s cabinet member for communities and a councillor in the Wingrove ward, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that a key focus of the initiative would be to get a grip on fly-tipping and littering.
She added that she wants businesses to take a “leading role” in encouraging people to act more responsibly, such as by ensuring their commercial waste is collected regularly enough and that incidents of fly-tipping are always reported, and take greater pride in their community. Coun Ali admitted that the council is “over-resourcing this problem” and that “what we have been doing is not working”, adding that solving the long-running issue would require “outside the box” ideas.
She said: It is every day now, it is not a one-off. As soon as the streets are cleared, literally by the next day they look the same again. There are bigger issues to deal with, like how much waste we generate as a population and the amount of packaging on things.
“Our recycling rates are not as great as they can and there needs to be education on that. Bin sizes are not adequate, but the council is under-funded. We don’t have the money to do more pickups.”
Coun Ali added: “It is about civic duty and a duty of care. There is a moral imperative to tackle this issue because it is not good enough. It has never been good enough to litter anywhere. We have horrendous issues in the city centre, but just as much in our residential areas now. If we can get buy-in from businesses to act and set a good example, that is a good start.”
Amar Rafiq, of the Lunchbox takeaway on Westgate Road, told the LDRS that the area around the busy high street suffered from a “confusing” mix of identical-looking communal residential bins and commercial bins. He said: “My business has waste collection from the council, but the bins look identical to communal bins. So people either get into my bin or dump next to it, which attracts more pests.
“We need to work together, a handful of people can’t do it alone. People need to be educated on this.” Mr Rafiq added that he hoped the new business forum would help resolve traffic and parking issues around Westgate Road and lead to “more consideration” from the council of business’ needs.