Member Article

First of Manchester's Clean City projects get green light

Projects aimed at cutting litter and improving public spaces across Greater Manchester have become some of the first schemes to be funded from a £14.5m airport windfall.

Now, more communities across the city are being asked to continue sending in their ideas about how the Clean City fund – provided through the City Council’s shareholding in Manchester Airport – can be spent to help clean, green and improve the city’s environment.

The first six Clean City projects have now been announced, tackling a wide range of issues across the city, but more than 400 members of the public have already responded to the call to suggest ways of spending the fund, and City Council officers are now working on turning the first 80 of these into practical plans.

One scheme is aimed at reducing the amount that the City Council spends on removing rubbish from Manchester’s allotments by encouraging users to compost their waste.

Although the City Council has reduced this annual cost from £30,000 five years ago, it still spends around £7,000 a year removing rubbish from the city’s 42 allotment sites – almost all of which can be recycled, and officers hope this cost can be entirely removed under the scheme.

Allotment holders will be invited to free education sessions explaining the benefits of composting and will also be provided with free composting bins.

The Association of Allotment Societies, which represents allotment users, supports the scheme and will be working with the City Council to educate all 2,300 users.

Allotment user Lucas Athienites said: “The more people we can get composting on our site the better and this scheme should help with that.”

Another project is designed to transform Fletcher Moss Botanical Gardens in Didsbury and restore the area as the jewel in south Manchester’s horticultural crown.

The scheme, which aims to attract more people to the gardens, involves stripping existing overgrown plants from the park’s rockery, installing defences against weeds and planting new flowers and shrubs which take longer to grow and require less maintenance.

The City Council has worked closely with the Friends of Fletcher Moss group while developing the scheme and will build up groups of volunteers who will help tend to the plants in the future.

Alan Hill, chairman of the friends group, said: “For the benefit of the community we’re absolutely delighted that there’s now the possibility of really trying to restore the park back to its former standard.”

Cllr Rosa Battle, Manchester City Council’s executive member for arts and leisure, said: “Fletcher Moss has played an significant role in the city for generations and thanks to this bid, we can now look forward to working closely with the community to make sure this important public space has got a bright future.”

Another project will deal with problems caused by litter and weeds getting trapped in wire mesh guards placed around young trees to protect them.

This litter builds up and is difficult for street cleaners to remove but a Clean City grant will pay for around 800 of these grills to be taken away, making streets cleaner and enabling the trees to grow properly.

A final scheme deals with problems caused by mature trees on pieces of green land such as grass verges next to major roads.

As the trees grow, the lower branches make it impossible for grass cutters to get to the ground beneath them, often meaning large areas around the trees look scruffy and poorly maintained as litter and other debris gets caught in the long grass.

The fund will pay for the lower branches to be removed, enabling mowers to get to the ground and improving the appearance of public land across the city. This work will have a lasting impact as it will take up to a decade for the branches to grow back.

Rose Cusack from Gorton said: “This will go a long way in parts of the city outside the centre. We’ve got tree guards on our street and people do tend to just stick their litter in them. We’ve been trying to get into them and get rid of this stuff but it’s very difficult.”

Another scheme which has been approved seeks to provide hundreds of new bins across the city centre to deal with litter problems.

The City Council are now looking at options to be installed for testing in the new year.

Waste collected from the new bins will be sent to a plant where any recyclable material can be collected.

The fund will now also pay for two high tech street cleaning machines which will be tested in the city centre before being used in other parts of Manchester.

The Glutton, a powerful vacuum cleaner which can suck up everything that will pass through a 12.5cm tube from cigarette packets and glass to dead leaves and dog faeces, can be used on all types of ground.

These projects, some of the first to be approved under the City Council’s clean and green fund, have cost just over £600,000, and more schemes are now being developed, with officers working with residents on a large number of ideas aimed up cleaning areas of the city.

Details of these schemes will be announced in the new year, but the City Council is now asking for more ideas from residents about how the money can be spent between now and 2016.

The council received the extra airport dividend this financial year as a one off, largely due to Manchester Airport Holdings Ltd’s purchase of Stansted Airport.

The money cannot be spent on projects which would create ongoing costs, such as hiring extra staff or supporting existing facilities, but must go to one-off investments which would make a lasting difference to improve the quality of the environment.

Cllr Kate Chappell, Manchester City Council’s executive member for the environment, said: “These projects are based on very simple ideas but they will make a real difference to people’s lives, making their neighbourhoods look and feel like better places to live. We’ve also chosen these projects as they will not just make a difference now, but for many years to come.

“However, these are only the first projects to be given the go ahead. We have received hundreds of suggestions from members of the public and our officers are now working on hundreds of new schemes which will be announced over the next few months, but we want residents to continue sending in ideas that will help to make the city a green, sustainable place to live.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .