Dave Thomas: We all have a role to play in keeping the Bay tidy

Some of you may remember that during our Budget Consultation earlier this year we put forward two projects that the Cabinet and I hope will make a difference for those living and working in Torbay. The two investment projects are called ‘Operation Brighter Bay’ and ‘Operation Town Centres’. In this week's column I wanted to shine a spotlight on the ‘Operation Brighter Bay’ part.

Our commitment to Operation Brighter Bay will see an additional investment of £300,000 towards the work that SWISCo does. This, and along with savings and efficiencies made within SWISCo, will be put towards helping make the Bay a more attractive and safer place for those that live, work and visit here.

We have asked for this investment to focus on residential areas as well as in the Bay’s more high-profile areas. The extra funding will include green areas receiving more attention with more cuts to grass verges along with the renewal of more white lines and yellow box markings.

One of the reasons for focussing on improving the road markings is that this will also improve road safety, traffic flow and better access to parking spaces as they will be more clearly identified. This project will also be looking at a change in how potholes are repaired, which will mean more are dealt with within the funds available as well.

Just before the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, I joined SWISCo’s Street Cleansing Crew just after 7am. They were out and about on their rounds in Torquay Town Centre. Our Street Cleansing Teams work in and around our town centres and harboursides every day, sometimes starting as early 4am, just as the night revellers are going home!

There are currently 48 Street Cleansing staff, working seven days a week throughout Torbay. This number increases by a further 18 over our busy summer period. They are a hard-working team using state-of-the-art cleaning equipment which together really does make a difference.

The day I was with them, they were carrying out a range of jobs. This included sweeping the prom and pavements with the Baby sweeper. This piece of equipment is called the MaxWind. It’s a fully electrically powered solution for cleaning pedestrian areas, parking lots and small or medium sized areas.

The Graffiti Van was also out and about that morning. using the very powerful power wash to tackle the really intrenched grime and detritus in those hard-to-reach areas.
A vehicle called the Haxo Sweeper was also being used. This piece of equipment has scrub decks which helps to clean those larger areas of pavements and footways. SWiSCo also has small electric push-along sweepers allowing for cleansing when the Bay’s streets are already busy with people. Our bigger machines can’t really be in operation past 10am due to the noise and size.

Alongside the Street Cleansing Team the Road Sweeper was out along with the team who empty the bins. Unless you are very earlier riser you may miss seeing these, as it happens around 6am most mornings.

It was a great morning seeing all of this in action, and this is only a small part of what SWISCo currently deliver. A range of cleansing schedules across the whole of the Bay on a daily to a quarterly frequency. Alongside these daily times SWISCo also have reactive teams who attend anti-social matters as fly-tipping, dog fouling and graffiti which attend to things that you have reported.

If you haven’t done it before, I really do encourage you report anything like fly-tipping, litter, graffiti that you see when you are out an about. You can also report invasive weeks, overgrown grass and unfortunately if you come across a dead animal. All the forms can be found on the council’s and SWISCo’s website (www.swsico.co.uk)

As well as us all working together to make or own spaces look great, making sure we don’t drop litter, picking up after our dogs and reporting fly tipping we can all make Torbay a place we can all be proud of.