With over 150 staff and an annual budget of £6.8 million, Streets and Open Spaces provides some of the council’s main customer-facing services including street cleansing, grounds maintenance in parks and open spaces, litter enforcement, dog wardens, City Rangers and tree management.
These services are vital in helping to conserve and enhance the high quality and unique character of the city’s parks, streets and open spaces.
Councillors are set to discuss a report published this week, which recommends adopting a new development strategy to enable the Streets and Open Spaces service to respond positively to the opportunities and challenges that Cambridge faces.
These include the growth of the city, with more residents, homes, businesses and tourists.
The service also needs to adapt its approach to respond to the council’s environmental and climate change policies and the ongoing public sector austerity measures implemented by government.
The strategy identifies a number of areas for improvement including the need for Streets and Open Spaces to:
- Provide a better customer experience for residents and visitors;
- Be more environmentally friendly;
- Be better value for money.
Last year the council’s residents’ survey showed that many of the Streets and Open Spaces services are valued and highly rated by residents.
However, responses to the survey did identify a need to update procedures, to improve work scheduling and productivity in grounds maintenance and street cleansing operations, and to make it easier for residents to report problems quickly and conveniently.
The strategy sets out the overall vision for improvement and, if it is approved by councillors, detailed implementation plans will be developed. These would be subject to further discussion at a future committee meeting.
Cllr Anna Smith, Executive Councillor for Streets and Open Spaces, said: “Our fantastic Streets and Open Spaces team are on the frontline, seven days a week, 365 days a year, keeping our city clean and green. The work they do is valued highly by our residents.
“We want to build on this to make the service even better and that is why we carried out a detailed review which has shown us where we need to improve.
“Cambridge is growing in size and population and the demand for these services is increasing as a result at a time when central government grant continues to fall, disappearing altogether by 2020.
“This report allows us to explore how we can continue to provide an excellent service which is fit for today’s city.”
Councillors will discuss the report at Community Services Scrutiny Committee on 29 June.
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