The Litterwatchers scheme is a voluntary scheme run by the Environmental Services Directorate. It is open to anyone who is willing to work with us and assist us in improving the standard of cleanliness in their local area.
Members of the scheme act as the eyes and ears in their local area to help the Council tackle the problems associated with littering, dog fouling, graffiti, flyposting and fly tipping. At 1/4/04, there were 157 litterwatchers in the scheme.
Litterwatchers are provided with a phone card, which allows them to contact our Customer Services Centre free of charge to report incidents or advise us that an area needs a general street sweep. However, neither their calls nor their requests receive any preferential treatment. The call centre staff and the street cleaning service have not been given a list of litterwatchers. This allows us to measure the response to their requests with the knowledge that it is a true reflection of the service we are providing and an indicator of how well we are performing to requests in general.
In addition to asking litterwatchers to contact us when areas need attention, we ask that we be able to contact them on occasion to ask how satisfied they are with what we are doing. We may also wish to contact scheme members if we are considering any community based activity, or if we have a litterwatcher that would like to meet the other scheme members in their area.
The amount of time and effort that individuals dedicate to this scheme is entirely dictated by themselves. Members can if they prefer e-mail the Customer Services Centre if this is more convenient than contacting us by telephone.
We do not disclose the identities of litterwatchers without their consent and we advise them not to take on board any issues that may potentially result in conflict with their neighbours, but to refer matters to us in order that we can tackle the problem wherever possible.
We are very grateful for the contributions of our existing litterwatchers and wish to expand the scheme further. The problems of littering and fly tipping in Oldham are a drain on our resources and we aim to do all that we can to improve the standard of cleanliness of the borough throughout.
Anyone interested in joining the scheme should telephone 'Contact Oldham' on 0161 770 6644.