To be upset our town is so run down now?

[Blueybanditbingochilli]

Day off with my kids (toddler and 5 year old) so thought I would take them to the park for a picnic. It’s a walk I’ve done a thousand times this year, yet today it really sank in what a dump our town now is.

About 3 or 4 times on the (short) walk, we had to detour into the road as the weeds and hedges by the pavement are so overgrown they’re literally impassable.

Rubbish, nappies and disposable vapes lying in the road/walkways. There was a kind of ‘tide’ of rubbish against the wall adjacent to the path - crisp packets, tissues, cigarette ends.

Just before we got there I felt something squelch in my flip flops (yep), looked down and clearly some dog poo had somehow flicked into my shoe and I had trodden it in 🤮 it sounds funny but it really isn’t when it happens to you! There was loads of dog poo in general that I constantly had to remind DC1 to avoid.

It just looks so run down. I understand councils have had cuts but this isn’t a little bit worse, it’s a lot worse. Where is all the money going? I honestly can’t see where it’s being spent because the entire town is a dump. Of course I blame the Tories (and know it’ll take time for things to improve yada yada) but honestly it looks like we have no council at all.

Just a rant!

I don’t know which category rubbish and maintenance fall into but the budgets look very very small for the possible contenders.

Madness! I did see a Panorama which said one went bust through a single poor investment.

British people are by and large disgusting slobs who think their mess is someone elses problem. Ironically they’re also the first to blame migrants for making these messes.

I hate it here.

@Blueybanditbingochilli madness yes

but when I posted I was shocked to see how many posters favoured that rule. Just thought council tax must increase, no matter that the capex part was being ploughed into pointless crap.

more than one council has gone bust through having free reign to do these stupid things. I’m a classic example of someone who would have campaigned heavily for change but no point when all types of government want this.

wrt to residents, I don’t know what they want but generally I don’t think anyone can face local politics either. It’s all just corrupt from top to bottom. Mum in her 80s is convinced it used to be better.

She probably had plastic grass in her garden, it seems to be popular in the UK for some odd reason. You’d never ever see it where I live. Nor would you see much litter, because people learn from an early age not to throw litter where it doesn’t belong.

No, she wasn’t the sort of person I would expect to have plastic grass. An old woman, quite genteel. With her little shitzu or whatever it was, out for its morning poop in the school lane.

The majority of council tax is spent on social care which means the rest is spread rather thinly. I think dog owners should pay a dog tax which could pay towards cleaning up the poo..

Some people are just idiots.

I LOVE the idea of a dog tax, but isn’t that what the dog licence already was in GB?
(we still have dog licences in Northern Ireland).

plus perhaps dog owners would feel even more entitled not to pick up since they had already “paid” for someone else to do it? 🤔

I don’t know what the solution is but we certainly need one!

I agree. The problem in my area is that over 50% of the council's budget has to be used for adult and child social care. It's mostly provided by private companies who can charge £££. So when the council has a responsibility to provide care and no option than to use the private providers you can see the problem.

I live in an area with higher than average deprivation and poverty. Children's social care demand has almost doubled here in the last four years, but because much of the external residential care is through private firms, the council spend on this has almost tripled because there are no cost ceilings on what the private firms can charge.

It's bloody depressing when I look round at the potholes, and the rubbish, and the weeds. But I try and remind myself that there's a finite pot of money and if it needs to be spent on keeping vulnerable adults and children safe, then that rightly takes priority.

I also agree that there's a community element involved. Parking round here is a nightmare because so many people now park on pavements and double yellow lines. It's been a noticeable deterioration since covid. A few people started to do it, then when people realised there were zero consequences because there's no funding for traffic wardens everyone now parks where ever they want. Earlier this week there was a car on the zebra crossing so pedestrians couldn't get across as there was pavement fencing on either side.

Our local town is the same. It's so sad.

Our city centre is full of homeless people and people on drugs. The shops are empty.

No one goes anymore.

I'd bring back dog licences tied to microchip information. Money could be used towards street cleaning or whatever. Prevent irresponsible breeding and slack owners who don't pick up their dog mess. Easy way to track strays or dogs who are abandoned. I'd happily pay a dog licence for mine.

I have mentioned to people when I see them not picking up and have lent them a poo bag. Weirdly I never see anyone dropping litter actually .

Not dropping litter was drummed into me ( and all those my age ) I couldn't drop it if I wanted to. A few years ago I saw a well dressed woman blatantly drop a crisp packet in town I was so shocked I couldn't say anything. It's so anti social and a public health risk I'm amazed we haven't gone back to public messaging on it.

I think we see rubbish as cosmetic because we’re used to it being removed and have never really seen the impact of what happens when it’s left to rot - rats, diseases, parasites etc. I have to be honest and say I think basic sanitation should be a primary spend.

4 times?! How on earth has it risen that much? Lots of budget exploratory work needs to be done because this simply isn’t sustainable on any level.

I think everyone is happy to support others to the extent they reasonably can but not if it means rubbish is being left to pollute the streets and you can’t even walk safely down a pavement. Something has to change!

Same here. It's just so sad.

To the PP who said council budgets are stretched (which they are), our council has a seemingly bottomless pit of money with which to build cycle lanes (and maybe remove them afterwards too because they turned out to be dangerous and ill thought out).

It gives me the bloody rage so I try not to think about it and the fact that they stopped hot meals for the vulnerable elderly recently and everything else is going to complete shit here (except the cycle lanes)!

It’s shocking. The litter here is dreadful and the state of the town centre is awful. Everyone locally complains though like we are the only town facing this.
Like a PP I don’t get the mentality of people who drop litter. It’s not something I could do.

When I was writing that post I looked at my council's latest budget report and stats. The private firms all asked for cost increases of around 6-8% for this financial year. The Observer did an investigative piece at the end of last year, which showed that almost one in four children's care home places are provided by firms which are linked to investment firms.

When the council legally has to provide care and there's nobody else to use, their hands are tied. Care needs bringing back into the national health framework so that it can be subject to quality and cost controls, rather than used as a profit making enterprise.

I once saw a kid around 10 drop a crisp packet, on a small road with forest around. He didn’t see I was behind him and saw him do it. I told him to go back and pick it up, and he did! 😂 I explained that animals can actually get stuck in it.

Use fix my street!

www.fixmystreet.com/

There's an app but you can just use the website!

Take a photo of the overgrown bushes etc say you have to walk in the road!

I use it all the time & generally stuff gets done!

I don't think they will come out for litter though sadly!

We are very lucky in our town someone has set up litter picking group - they do a great job!

Our council is the same - just not enough money to provide adequate services.

On the subject of where does the money go it's not that simple.

Firstly, the grants central government used to give local authority have massively shrunk over the past decade, but the amount they need to spend on adult social care, children's social care & education have risen to so high that there is no way to keep up with them.

The longer people live in ill health, the more it costs to care for them, more children & families need intervention & support from social care than ever before & we as a society expect schools to 'fix' every problem a child has.

All of this is provided by your local authority, not central government, and there is nowhere near enough money to manage these things let alone the other things they provide like bin emptying, street cleaning etc.

Local authority funding is so low that they can't keep up with their statutory obligations & central government is to blame.

If you want it to improve, get your local MP to lobby for more funding to go to local authorities, or it will just get worse and worse.

And that's why this country is by and large fairly tidy and there's lovely schemes where neighbours go litter picking and volunteers look after the flower beds in local parks. Such a hell hole.
The rest of the planet is so much nicer with zero trash and far better community engagement of course

I really doubt they can even do it given the 22bn black hole. I just don’t think it’s there, it feels a hopeless situation.

People don't help though, I have a green space in front of my home and I keep my garden neat and swept and also sweep the pavement outside my home. However one neighbour recently weeded down the edge of their fence and instead of disposing of the weeds picked them up and dumped them on the grassed area. Someone else had their blood waste bin emptied and the bin men spilt some on the pavement, neighbour and binmen both ignore the mussell shells and food waste that are laying on the pavement.

We have another neighbour who gets all the crap out of their property they don't want and dumps it on the grass verge rather then take it to the tip or put in the bin, so we are forever reporting fly tipping.

It's a nice area, not cheap place to live but it just looks shit because people are lazy dirty sods

I read the first sentence as you weed ( peed) outside your home !! Sorry I was just about to say how disgusting.😂