We do not have a legal duty to clean roads and streets at a set frequency. However, under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, we have to make sure that roads and open spaces under our control and to which the public have access are free of litter and refuse as far as practicable.
To meet our duty, we focus on the standard of cleanliness rather the frequency of cleaning.
Also, our cleaning programme focuses on those areas which have most pedestrian or vehicle traffic as these are generally the worst affected areas of our district.
However, we do have to balance the resources available to respond to complaints and deal with litter hotspots.
Our cleanliness standards
We use the DEFRA Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse to set the standard of cleanliness for our streets.
Using the code of practice, we have broken our district down in to different zones:
- level 1; Town centres (Braintree, halstead and Witham
- level 2; residential areas in towns and villages
- level 3; all other areas such as industrial areas, parks and so on
- level 4; A roads
- level 5; local roads
- level 6; private land including eduction, railway areas, supermarket car parks and so on
The code of practice describes the standard we aim to reach across the district.
For each zone we have set target response times to bring the cleanliness level up to the highest standard. The response times are depend on the severity of the litter problem.
You can view and download our cleanliness standard. [link to document download]
You can also view and download our cleanliness standards, cleaning response times and parish sweeps for:
