Street Cleaning and the New Contract

One of the most common complaints about the environment in Brent is about street cleaning.  Therefore a lot of attention was paid to this aspect in the new contract.  The older contract focuses on the number of cleans per week, where3as the new one (on street cleaning and other things) is more concerned with outputs.  Rather than demand the contractor clean a street (say) once a week, they are required to meet a Keep Britain Tidy standard of cleanliness. 

The grades they need to meet will be either A (clean) of B (with only small items).  Obviously, this is easier to say than achieve.

Of particular interest to people who live near town centres such as Willesden High Road or off Kilburn High Road is an apparently arcane change in zoning.  The old contract had five zones, with most of the Borough regarded as "residential" and getting fewer cleans than town centres.  This sounds fine in principle, but provides problems for areas such as Wendover Road just off Harlesden High Street.  Here litter blows off the High Street and more litter is dropped by the high number of people going through to Willesden Junction.  The effect is that Wendover Road needs more frequent cleaning than most of Brent's streets.  The old contract did not have the flexibility to deal with this.  The new contract is intended to give greater flexibility by making the relationship between need and resource much stronger.