A LEADING Thurrock councillor says he is 'over the moon' after the borough council hit seven out of ten improvement targets.

Thurrock Council's investment into Clean It, Cut It, continues to make strides, with improvements made in more than half of its green and clean service areas in the past year, according to a recent inspection by Keep Britain Tidy.

Figures recorded in this year's Keep Britain Tidy Local Environmental Quality Survey of England (LEQSE) reveal that the council has made improvements in its clean and green services with seven out of 10 areas, including public footpaths and rural roads, demonstrating vast improvements and being well within target.

The council says that following an inspection by Keep Britain Tidy in 2018/19, an action plan was created in a bid to identify areas of improvement and continue making Thurrock's streets cleaner and greener.

A statement says: "Continued investment has led to four new mechanical sweepers and replacing all of the mechanical sweeping fleet, doubling the number of street cleaning teams on major routes within the borough to address the amount of litter and cleansing of rural routes; and teams focusing on attention to detail by increasing litter picking and vegetation clearance on footpaths and under benches and railings.

"All borough dog fouling bins have been replaced by dual use dog fouling and street litter bins; an excess of 600 street litter bins are now placed throughout the borough; and street cleaners have been working proactively with the council's enforcement team to clean up street furniture and council-owned land of graffiti."

Cllr Aaron Watkins, Cabinet Member for Environment, said: "I'm over the moon with the recent results. It shows the investment we continue to make into Clean It, Cut It, and how working smarter with the data we collect over time allows us to be more active and innovative.

"We all want a cleaner Thurrock and these results show that our team's hard work is helping to achieve this.

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"Another example of continued innovation is striving to be more active in our work. We recently introduced a new electronic system to speed up the time it takes to respond to residents' reports of fly-tipping and littering, and have been working to clean Thurrock more regularly by zoning areas in line with DEFRA guidance.

"Clean It, Cut It is at the heart of what we do – striving for a cleaner and healthier Thurrock – and we will continue to invest and innovate the service to do just that."

The Keep Britain Tidy LEQSE grades the overall cleanliness of environments by litter, detritus, graffiti and fly-posting.