COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF CLONDALKIN AREA COMMITTEE

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

MOTION NO. 20

MOTION: Councillor T. Delaney

That the Manager puts a litter control plan in place and commits adequate resources to implement such a plan in the Woodford Walk vicinity as there has been consistent dumping/littering in this area over the past 12-18 months which appears to be getting progressively worse.

REPORT:

The road-sweeping contract was tendered in late 2011 with a view to appointing the contractor in February 2012 and the contract was revised to include for greater flexibility of the services as required by the Council.  It is hoped that the new contract will provide an increase in the extent of litter picking from green spaces and planted areas and an improvement in the quality of cleaning done, as well as additional weed removal in all areas and an extension to the duration of the leaf clearance operation.

The Council utilises the services of both the Operation's Unit, the Cleansing Unit based in Ballymount Depot in conjunction with a private contractor who has dedicated teams that operate an extensive street-cleaning programme on main roads, local roads and estates.

It is the Council’s intention to introduce a works programme to include all cleaning works carried out by the Council's Operations and Cleansing Units as well as work carried out by the road sweeping contractor in accordance with the regular road-sweeping schedule. Currently main roads such as Woodford Walk are swept on a monthly basis and housing estates in the Woodford area and Monsksfield area are swept four times per year and gullies are cleaned once a year on a scheduled basis.  The proposed works programme will ensure that areas can be cleaned in the interim periods between scheduled sweeps and indicators developed to enable an ongoing review of the level of resources and nature of the operations required. The preparation of a works programme for all cleansing works is at an advanced stage at present, once completed it is proposed that this programme will be brought to the attention of the elected members as part of the commitments given previously under the Litter Management Implementation Plan.  Also as part of the Council's Litter Management Plan, there will be a number of campaigns aimed at reducing the level of littering within the county, thereby reducing the resources required to cleanup after offenders and allowing the staff to be used in other operations.

The areas of Woodford, Monksfield and Yellow Meadows were cleaned by staff from the Council's Operations Section during the five day period from Wednesday January 5th to Tuesday January 10th.