How to rid London's high streets of their rubbish (plus related pavement thoughts)

I read a report, I went for a walk, I had some thoughts, I wrote them down

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I left my house just before nine yesterday morning and walked to a local Post Office about 15 minutes away to send out some copies of my books. The Post Office is in a street called The Narrow Way, a section of Mare Street in Hackney that became pedestrianised about ten years ago. The council’s consultation promised a “more flexible and adaptable public space” where “walking and cycling will be made safer and better” to the benefit of the public and businesses alike.

I am fond of the Narrow Way, and I think it has improved since the days when a wall of buses used to form down it (and I think buses should be plentiful). Its blend of independent and mainstream shops plus a bank and a building society feels about right. One of its cafés has become an Instagram phenomenon, attracting customers from near and far. Its vintage and charity shops are irresistible to one of my daughters.

At the same time, it is not immune to the problems facing many retail avenues in London and elsewhere. Its branch of Boots is in dire need of refreshment, typifying a wider careworn air. Cyclists of all varieties travel along it much too fast, weaving in and out of pedestrians, who include plenty of older people who aren’t quick on their feet (at least the “bus wall” moved slowly).

It was good to see council workers and shopkeepers alike sweeping up as doors opened for business, but this also underlined a feeling that with more resources and focussed effort the Narrow Way could be much more appealing.

On my excursion, I paid closer attention than usual to my long-familiar surroundings due to having read and written about a new report by the campaign group Create Streets. It looks at the bad job London makes of clearing its high streets of commercial waste and how to change that for the better.

For me, the issue is one of a cluster in need of sustained, collective action, ranging from shoplifting, to pavement clutter, to antisocial behaviour (including selfish cycling) to doing more to help those who sleep rough and beg.

London’s high streets should be pleasant, clean and social spaces. Its pavements should be safe and tranquil. Local level collaborations between boroughs, the police, business groups and others about these themes are long-established, but might have greater impact if given higher-level and higher-profile backing.

Everyone uses local high streets. If they degenerate, people notice. They encapsulate everyday quality of life concerns for all. And there are political gains to made from been seen to care about them, as I have argued before (see here and here).

Below, I republish the piece I wrote about the Create Streets report about commercial waste, which appeared at On London on Friday.

“Many of London’s high streets are dirty,” says a new report about how to put that right. “This is not due to careless fly tippers. It is the system operating normally.”

Compiled by Nicholas Boys Smith and Tom Noble of Create Streets, and funded by three of London’s business improvement districts (BIDs), it addresses problems with commercial waste and why so much of it is left lying around. Three key issues are defined:

1. Britain’s waste collection market is “uniquely fragmented” and under-regulated, with consequent pile-ups of “rubbish refuse” on pavements commonplace.

2. These unsightly heaps are bad for high street businesses.

3. Waste mounds attract pests and other litter, and the systems for clearing them add to traffic, noise and pollution.

The last of these, the report says, creates “a vicious cycle of decline and degradation” in the context of “increasing business costs and cash-strapped local authorities”. Moreover, the authors fear that the government’s introduction next year of its “simpler recycling” rules and plans for a future “deposit return scheme” for drink containers could have unintended consequences in terms of burdens for high street businesses. They ask: “Is it possible to have a system that works for businesses, improves low recycling rates, and keeps our streets clean?”

Well, maybe. And it surely ought to be, given the avoidable nature of this aspect of what is wrong in Britain’s big city high streets.

The report isn’t solely about London, but the capital is its primary focus. The size and the ubiquity of commercial waste intrusion on pavements is illustrated by Bond Street, our very poshest. Even there, it is not unusual to encounter “heap afer heap after heap of piled and tumbling rubbish”. That is despite Bond Street benefiting from a “consolidation scheme”, designed to concentrate collections at particular times.

Camden Council, which includes part of the West End, has a Love Clean Streets app and website and encourages residents to use them to report fly tipping. The report includes a heat map showing how prevalent rubbish pile-ups are in some of Camden’s busiest commercial areas. The borough is – partly precisely because it enlists local people to assist it – considered to be better than most at keeping its streets clear and tidy, which makes you wonder what the less good are like.

The report also draws attention to a survey conducted by one of the three the BIDs supporting it, Central District Alliance – the other two are London Heritage Quarter and South Bank – showing how important cleaner streets are to its members and argues that fewer but more effective collections could make a significant contribution to reducing congestion and associated poor air quality. A nationwide study commissioned from Deltapoll finds that the public find rubbish-free streets strikingly more “pleasant” to behold than those dotted with even neatly-bagged heaps of rubbish.

There is some crossover between commercial waste and the domestic waste of people who live above shops. The report looks at the work of what used to be called the London Waste and Recycling Board, now shortened to ReLondon, in busy Upper Street in Islington. ReLondon is a partnership between City Hall and London boroughs to try to make a better job of waste management with the goal of turning London into “a leading, low-carbon circular economy” or, in plainer language, one where people “waste less and reuse, repair, share and recycle more”.

The report praises the simplicity of one solution, re-purposing grit bins, but also the great complexity of putting it in to effect, involving draining searches for sign-offs from Transport for London (Upper Street is a red route), allaying the concerns of the police, who feared the new bins would be used for stashing weapons or drugs, and lots and lots of “on the ground” engagement with shopkeepers and residents.

The report comes up with three sets of recommendations.

1. In the short term, more Bond Street-style consolidation schemes, more use of e-cargo bikes for collections, and more centralised locations for depositing waste that don’t look horrible.

2. In the medium term, councils making better use of powers they already have, higher fines for those who break existing rules, and simplifying enforcement systems.

3. In the long term, fewer and better commercial waste collection operators, creating a new category of “ordinary commercial” waste which would enable smaller firms to use ordinary municipal services in return for a small fee, and setting up a zones in which a single operator is responsible for everything.

“Through a range of solutions, from small scale, bottom-up collective action through to top town regulatory changes, we can create high streets that are cleaner, more sustainable and more inviting for everyone,” the report concludes. Read it in full here.