A proposal to remodel street cleansing to improve the service for residents and drive a reduction in the overall operating costs will be considered by the council’s Executive committee next week.
It is one of 47 savings proposals published today which are due to be discussed at the meeting on Tuesday 5 November as the council looks to find £40M of spending reductions for the financial year 2025-26. Teams across the council are bringing forward proposals to make efficiencies, increase income or make spending reductions.
The proposal will deliver a better service and address some of the common challenges faced across the district. The proposal draws upon evidence provided via a review of service and consumption data collected over the last twelve months.
The Parks and Street Cleansing team’s proposal includes:
- Improving productivity by removing the need for multi-site visits
- Changing working patterns to include weekend cleansing of main gateways
- Improving efficiency of street sweeping services and broadening coverage
- improving routing and cleansing schedules to increase efficiency
- improving collaboration with other teams, organisations and groups including housing associations and community groups
- review of non-statutory and commercial work
- stronger enforcement
Cllr Sarah Ferriby, portfolio holder for healthy people and places, said: “We know how important it is to residents that our streets and communities are clean and we are committed to delivering high-quality services while maintaining financial responsibility.
“The pressure on our finances means we must look at better ways of working that can improve the services whilst increasing efficiency and productivity.”
If the proposal is agreed by the Executive, public consultation and engagement will then take place.
Bradford Council set itself the target of finding £40M in savings for the budget for 2025-26. The 47 proposals laid out in the report to Executive for next week’s meeting mark the first £33.84M towards that savings target. Of this there will be £1.5 million savings from efficiency work in Street Cleansing. Further council savings proposals will be published in December before the council sets its budget early next year.
