It's official that Swansea's one of the cleanest cities in Britain

SWANSEA has been named one of the cleanest cities in the UK in the latest Clean Britain Awards.

Swansea took the silver award ahead of bronze award winners Birmingham City and were only beaten to the gold spot by Truro City Council. The overall UK winner was North Norfolk District Council.

John Hague, Cabinet Member for the Environment in Swansea Council, said: "We have long recognised the importance of providing high standards of cleanliness and devote significant resources in to achieving this aim.

"The city centre over recent years has become an area which is active virtually 24 hours a day and has been the subject of many new initiatives aimed at improving both its cleanliness and its overall qualit in terms of aesthetic appearance and user friendliness.

"The Council and local city centre businesses have worked hard together to achieve the results we can now see today."

Some of the initiatives have included the introduction of bigger and better litter busting equipment such as the Glutton litter collecting machine that's operated manually by city centre street cleaning staff.

The Council has also launched the Streetforce initiative that's given Council litter wardens the ability to issue on the spot fixed penalties to anyone spotted carelessly dropping litter and refusing to use bins provided.

Shoppers have also been rewarded for using bins and some have been issued with prize money to the same value as fixed penalties.

City centre businesses that make up the Swansea Business Improvement District (BID) have also contributed to help keep the city centre clean and have funded extra cleaning equipment and staff to spruce up the city.

Dave Kenny, Chairman of Swansea BID, said: "Winning the silver award is fantastic news for Swansea and demonstrates the commitment of local businesses to a cleaner city centre.

"This award is the result of a lot of hard work from the clean team staff, the BID cleaner group and Swansea Council. This award recognises the productivity of an excellent partnership between the BID and the Council and goes to prove that Swansea is cleaner than ever before."

Council News Feed

This page last updated on March 11 2009