Why does the UK stop caring for its surroundings?

[Nutmuncher]

As a frequent visitor to my local city I’ve seen the last few years of rapid growth and development of the city centre, lots of huge new spaces and public domains have been created, lovely planters etc. It seems though that once the things are built that’s it, they’re just left to rot away and no one seems to care for them.

There’s a glass bridge near the Cathedral for example which must be around 10 years old, the glass has probably never been cleaned covered in algae, the pavements covered in gum, graffiti and litter on either side of it. It perhaps gets the occasional stop by a street cleaner but no proper cleaning.

Surely there’s a role for a team of people to clean public spaces regularly, like actually going around scraping stickers off lamp posts, removing graffiti, replanting planters? Why do we just build things then leave them unkept to rot away? It would have a huge impact on the feel and aesthetics of our surroundings yet is so far down the priority list nothing gets done.

Yep. Litter everywhere, leaves all over the pavement until they rot away. When I lived in Portugal, there were two guys from the council clearing them every couple of days.

@EnglishBreakfastTea1 it’s infuriating isn’t it.

We used to sweep up the leaves down our street and put them in the garden waste bins over the winter. People would offer space in their bins. Now the council charge £40 for green waste so no-one does it anymore. Great money-saving idea. The drains are blocked with sludge.

I live in a main street and leaving the house takes me straight on to the pavement. I regularly sweep that pavement and often think how wonderful it would be if everyone (who could) did that. Just that small gesture would make such a difference. Yes to all the fancy planters but then plants left to die with litter and cigarette ends. We are very lucky in that our local ones are maintained via BID and volunteers.

The amount of rain isn’t helping round here. Grey streaks down the walls of painted buildings and green ?algae on the bare stone.

It seems volunteer groups are the ones most motivated to help wherever they can, great if you have them otherwise you’re at the mercy of the council.

This. I hate it when people just leave unwanted items on a grassed verge and put a sign saying 'Free'. Nobody wants it and it gets left for months and has to be reported as flytipping.

If you don't want something put it at the bottom of your own garden with a sign and then get rid of it yourself if no one wants it.

As a nation we are slobs. It takes no time at all for somewhere to become slummy. People think nothing of dropping litter, putting their feet up on chairs, flytipping.

In central London there are lots of blocks of flats - they are private but with some social housing provided as a condition of them being built. You can tell which ones are people who are in the social housing because of the shite they keep on their balconies. You can give them all the nice stuff but they have zero inclination to keep it decent. Must be bloody annoying if you have paid big money for a property but your neighbour has been given it free/cheap and is making it look a mess.

I am going to get flamed for that comment, I was brought up in social housing, but different times. People were houseproud and wouldn’t dream of leaving balconies or communal areas in a mess. Nowadays it’s a mentality that being slobby is ok, not even seen as odd. Of course not all mess is generated by people living in social housing but that was an example. One of my ex colleagues was a social housing tenant in central London - she was house proud. She saw a neighbour throw a shitty nappy out of the window onto the street. Like why?