To think a lot of the Uk looks like a state

[Novembermummy88]

Not sure if I am being dramatic or if years of austerity are really starting to show…? Lately I’ve really started to notice how filthy, run down and falling apart everywhere looks! I live in a town in the south east on the borders of the M25. Every where there are gapping pot holes (can hardly avoid the volume there are now and genuinely concerned I will lose a wheel at some point!), broken lamp posts, the volume of litter / filth on the roads seems very high and can’t remember the last time I saw a road sweeper, and things like pathways are a state, road markings worn out, SO many closed/dilapidated shops….the town just looks awful as do many of the nearby towns! Is it just the South East looking like this? Aibu?! Or have I watched too much Selling Sunsets and setting my expectations too high…???

No, it isn't, very obviously. It's a combination of Brexit and a totally incompetent government.

Flytipping has been mentioned above.
In 2019, you could visit our local recycling centre 6 days a week, as many times as you liked, with no appointment necessary.
Then it went to pre-booked slots through Covid, and only one a week per household.
Then they dropped one day after the next.
The site is now open 3 days a week only, with pre-booked slots, with one visit allowed per week per household, and the workers check through your bags and will send you home with your waste if it's not accepted.
I get it - budgets are tight amd they need to encourage reducing and reusing, before recycling/binning. But its increased the level of fly tipping in the area considerably.

Every generation thinks that things look a state in their time. It's normal.

This has been the reality of run down seaside towns and Northern ex mill towns for 2 or 3 decades. People are only taking notice now that it's starting to affect Southern "naice" places as the OP says just off the M25. Perhaps things will finally change now that the rot has spread to the South East!

@TrinnySmith that poster said the people doing it were guilty of small crimes. Things like shoplifting etc. Do you really think those people deserve to be put at risk more than the average Jo?

Could it be to do with the people who live in the country? It's not the council going around scattering rubbish everywhere.

Oh and the roundabouts and road verges near Hounslow - I’ve never seen anything like the amount of litter strewn about.

I think it is a lack of pride in the place you live, I live in west London and the streets are filthy, not just dropped litter but deliberately dumped stuff, from clothes to mattresses, so depressing to walk through and it is relentless. I pick up the rubbish and umpteen drinks cans in my street as I can't bear the filth and waste of resources.
And the council instead of constantly filling potholes took to stripping of the tarmac to reveal the hard core layer underneath, which at least removes the holes, one road has been like this for about 10 years.

I live in a small town in central Scotland and it’s a mess. Potholes are awful. Big gapes in the road with them. What used to be a busy town centre with shops, now is empty with boarded up buildings. Fly tipping all over. Town full of takeaways, beauty salons. It’s depressing

Well said

In a lot of places, it's never picked up. It looks bad, but it's literally decades of litter, often blown in from elsewhere. In our town, there was a motorway sliproad that literally was never cleared of litter. I used it daily on my work commute for about 20 years, and you got to recognise the carrier bags slowly decaying hanging from the hedgerow! Especially worse in winter when the leaves dropped and the hedges were just twiggy wood. It only got cleared when a new by pass road was built and they widened the slip road. A few years later and it's full of rubbish again! It's blown in from the local council tip a mile away, as it's all plastic bags, paper, etc, i.e. things that carry in the wind, not cans, bottles or heavy items that wouldn't be blown in.

I used to live in a Northern ex mill town and it really has got a lot worse the past 10 years. The council has no money and it shows. The only reason that the place doesn't look completely awful is that the village has a lot of volunteers. The areas around us where there's less community look awful.

Fair point.

There are some spots I know will be laden with it. People not caring

PandasAreUseless - If your council tip is like mine it has different sections for waste, eg garden waste, wood, small electrical items, bulky waste, waste that can be turned into energy etc, so if you're taking stuff to the tip in bags of course they need to check that it goes into the right section because most of the waste is recycled.

As for boarded up town centre shops, well "use them or lose them". They will close down if customers don't use them. Many reasons for that. Obviously the out of town retail parks and large superstores encourage people to use them rather than town centre shops. Then internet shopping does the same. But councils also do irreparable damage with high car park charges, bus lanes/traffic calming/one way systems, etc which discourage drivers into towns so they drive to out of town retail parks instead or shop online. Chain stores owned by venture capitalists have also done untold damage - 20 years ago, people complained about "identikit" town centres which all had branches of the same national chains - many of those have now collapsed after being asset stripped by venture capitalists, leaving huge numbers of empty prime location shops. What chain stores remain seem to have given up and have very limited stock, disinterested staff, etc. No easy answers and sadly, most councils seem incapable of coherent strategies for their town centres - the "go to" answer seems to be re-purposing them into entertainment areas with cafes etc., but in my town, even the cafes are now closing down as there are simply too many of them trying to compete with ever-decreasing numbers of people in the town centre. What is needed is wholesale demolition of the low quality retail premises outside the core/central shopping area and building new living accommodation, just like most Uni towns have done for student accommodation. We need to get people back to living in town and city centres and reverse the trend over the past 50 years or so where town centres were converted into retail - town centre retail has gone forever, and we need to get people back to living there instead to stop the rot of run down/boarded up derelict areas.

I don't know if this has been mentioned but one of the reasons there is so much litter on some roads (dual carriageways and faster roads I believe) is because it has now been deemed to dangerous to pick litter without closing a lane and so it is very expensive to do it now and councils just don't have the money

This came home to me about 4 years ago. I’d spent time in Australia then landed back into the Uk. The difference in appearance was astounding. and it’s got much worse since then.

Wr desperately need a change of government so money goes back into the country rather than into the back pockets of Tory cronies.

Exactly this!

It is not teenagers or immigrants that are responsible for 13 years of austerity is it! You are blaming the poor and vulnerable for the terrible state of our city/towns infrastructure, when the blame lies solely with this corrupt, evil government.

In a lot of places, it's never picked up. It looks bad, but it's literally decades of litter, often blown in from elsewhere. In our town, there was a motorway sliproad that literally was never cleared of litter. I used it daily on my work commute for about 20 years, and you got to recognise the carrier bags slowly decaying hanging from the hedgerow! Especially worse in winter when the leaves dropped and the hedges were just twiggy wood. It only got cleared when a new by pass road was built and they widened the slip road. A few years later and it's full of rubbish again! It's blown in from the local council tip a mile away, as it's all plastic bags, paper, etc, i.e. things that carry in the wind, not cans, bottles or heavy items that wouldn't be blown in.

Yes this is what I mean, it's too dangerous to pick the litter from there and they can't close the slip road

The state of the roads is appalling. There are rural lanes round my way with potholes so big and deep that you could bath a small child in them. You wouldn't risk driving along them unless you had a 4x4.

I was impressed just after the snow had cleared a few weeks ago to see that the council were filling in a big pothole that had appeared during the freeze. Drove along there again last week and all the new tarmac has sunk so that there's still a big dip. Drains and gullies don't get cleared regularly, so you get lengths of road that are under water every time we have more than the slightest shower. You daren't risk driving through them, because you can't see if there are pot holes concealed by the water.

They reduced the frequency of cutting the grass verges to once a year to save money. Last summer, the grass near one junction was so long that you couldn't see if there were any cars coming up the hill.

Litter bins in town don't get emptied regularly, so people leave rubbish in bags beside the full bins. Sometimes the high street is reminiscent of the bin men strike at the end of the 70's.

The housing department has had its budget slashed so much that housing officers now have 3 times the caseload they used to, they get burned out and leave. A friend has just got her 3rd different housing officer in 6 months. She's got a problem with anti-social neighbours, and has had to start the whole process of getting it addressed 4 times.

On the plus side, we don't have much of a problem with crime, graffiti or vandalism, or gangs of feral youths. It's a naice middle-class town in the SE. And we have pro-active residents' associations that do a monthly litter pick in many areas.

It really does feel as though the physical fabric of the place is falling apart though.

Yes, the rot is spreading, but it definitely started 20/30 years ago. I used to live and work in a seaside town. It deteriorated rapidly in the 80s and worsened in the 90s, 00s, and is now basically a cess pit. Lots of seaside resorts experienced the same. That started spreading to our nearby small city (5 miles away) around 20 years ago, which is now also mostly run down and derelict. I've no doubt and not arguing that things haven't got worse in the past decade - they have. My point is that the rot set in 20/30 years ago and has been spreading from the less affluent areas to the more affluent areas over the intervening years. It's certainly nothing that started in the last decade - but if you live in a more affluent area, then the contagion/spread may have been late reaching your area!

I was genuinely shocked when we went on holiday to Europe this summer. Just seeing the quality of the roads and public transport, and pride in keeping towns looking nice with public green spaces etc. I had been before, but the contrast was so great this time.

Yes obviously.
But whereas lazier types used to be able to more freely chuck their mixed waste into the 'mixed waste' bins, they now cant, and they're fly tipping it instead.

The huge cuts to council budgets started with the coalition government in 2011/12 though.