Member Article

Newcastle City Council launches hard-hitting poster campaign

People across Newcastle are being urged to Keep It Clean in a major New Year campaign to do their bit to look after city in 2015.

Keep It Clean Newcastle is encouraging local people to pick up after themselves, their dogs and stamp out fly-tipping.

Newcastle City Council will spend approximately £4.2 million this year clearing up the streets of Newcastle, but due to budget cuts it can no longer afford to spend this kind of money in the future.

Cabinet Member for Communities, Cllr Hazel Stephenson, said:

“There is a real need to change some people’s behaviour in Newcastle and stop them littering, fly-tipping and not cleaning up after their dogs. This is bad for our city and local neighbourhoods it also affects people’s health and wellbeing.

“And we know that it is this behaviour that annoys residents the most.

“An area or a neighbourhood can go downhill very quickly when these problems build up, and they create a bad impression of Newcastle to those who live, visit and work here.

“It costs a small fortune to keep the city clean, but because of government cuts our budgets are under pressure all of the time and the amount of money the council has to spend on cleansing will only reduce. We must act now to try and change people’s behaviour to prevent them messing up the city in the first place.

“We know that our poster campaign may shock some people. We make no apologies for that, but we do hope that it will make people stop, think and deter them from dropping litter or failing to clean up after their pet.

“And this campaign isn’t being run in isolation. It forms part of the overall work we are doing with communities to do more to look after their local area themselves.

“By and large Newcastle is a clean city. Let’s keep it that way”.

The council recognises that majority of people in Newcastle are proud of their city and it is only a small proportion of people who behave in this negative way. So it will continue to do everything it can to enforce against these people and make them pay for their actions.

Cllr Stephenson added “We will not put up with this behaviour and continue to take action against these people. But Keep it Clean is a new approach to tackling the issue.

“We are engaging with local communities and encouraging them to make simple changes that will pay big dividends. We are also helping them to play a more active role in keeping our city and local neighbourhoods clean. This includes working with young people through our Enviro Schools programme, to help teach children responsible behaviours at an early age.”

The Keep it Clean campaign will run from January to March 2015, with posters being displayed in the city centre from this week. It will then be extended into other areas of the city on the coming months.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sarah Waddington .