New street cleaning taskforce hits the streets

A new street cleaning taskforce has hit the streets of Mid Suffolk to tackle litter, fly tipping, and graffiti across the district.

Mid Suffolk District Council’s new ‘respond, enforce and clean team’– REACT – have hit the district’s roads.

The two-strong team are ‘first responders’ to reactive cleansing incidents such as fly tipping, littering and graffiti across Mid Suffolk and are easy to spot in their special REACT van.

As well as tackling issues, they will also play a role in education and enforcement, including:

• advising on street cleansing issues
• patrolling problem areas
• encouraging bin use and better recycling
• gathering evidence and issuing warnings and notices

REACT increases the council’s capacity to respond to urgent and reactive street cleaning issues across the district.

The new service is being funded through £360K of re-invested income from Gateway 14 – the council-owned business, innovation, and logistics park in Stowmarket.

Mid Suffolk District Council’s cabinet member for environment, culture and wellbeing, Cllr Tim Weller, said:

“We all want Mid Suffolk to thrive – not just economically, but also culturally, socially, and environmentally – and boosting our street cleansing services will help by playing a key role.

“Our public realm service has a solid reputation for professionally managing a wide range of activity across our public spaces, including routine grounds maintenance and dog waste bin collections. Introducing additional REACT operatives mean reactive cleansing incidents, such as fly tipping, and our scheduled work aren’t competing for resource and time.

“By keeping our local environment clean and nature-friendly, we can continue to ensure our district remains a great place to live, work, do business, visit, and somewhere we can all be proud of.”

Cllr Tim Weller (centre) with REACT duo Jason (left) and Billy (right). Photo: Mid Suffolk District Council.

The investment in REACT is in addition to the Gateway 14 funding for increased scheduled street cleaning and ground maintenance work in Stowmarket.

This includes the collaborative work with Stowmarket Town Council’s town rangers – who were part-funded by a separate £50k investment by Mid Suffolk District Council.

While previous investment focuses specifically on Stowmarket, REACT will be operating across the whole of Mid Suffolk.

This is in addition to support for towns and villages across the district through a variety of grant and funding schemes, including new grants recently launched to support local sport and culture.