Westminster Council’s street cleaners have taken just an hour to clean and return to normal the streets around Westminster Abbey, Whitehall and Parliament Square following the Royal Wedding.
As soon as the council’s cleaning staff were allowed into the road by the Metropolitan Police they set straight to work at 12.45pm and finished at about 1.50pm.
Westminster’s street cleaners had already been working throughout the night to make sure the city was at its best for the hundreds of thousands of visitors, and of course the Royal Family and their guests.
Council bosses estimate that around 140 tonnes of rubbish will be collected over the course of the weekend by 130 cleaning staff.
Dozens of traffic lights are to be ripped out and one-way streets removed to help ease congestion in central London, Westminster Council announced.Clamping and towing will also be reintroduced to tackle the hardcore of motorists – including many foreign drivers – who run up hundreds of pounds worth of parking fines, the council said.
The announcements come as Westminster was due to set its budget priorities for 2011/12 at a full council meeting this evening (2 March) with a commitment to protect core services for the city’s most vulnerable people.
Over the next two years, the council is set to make savings of around £60 million – the majority of which will come from the back office with a focus on reducing unnecessary process, bureaucracy and red tape. This includes the savings the council has generated to date from its ongoing restructure.
Around 450 jobs are also set to go, many from middle and senior management, but despite the tough economic climate, Westminster – unlike a number of other local authorities – will not close a single children’s centre or cut any leisure or sporting facilities.
The council has also frozen council tax with a band D charge of £687.62 – the second lowest rate in the country.
If you are thinking of planning a street party or event to celebrate the Royal Wedding, Westminster Council Offers some help;
We know that not everyone will be experienced in event planning, and that many of you will be volunteers working hard to put a party on for your community.
To help you put on a successful event, once you have let us know what you want to do, we will make sure you have an experienced event planning officer to help you through the process of planning and holding an event. The sooner you can tell us about what you want to do by applying using our online service, the better. Follow the link below to apply.
We want to support local communities with the minimum of fuss and official intervention to ensure that everybody enjoys celebrating the Royal Wedding safely.
Please visit Westminster Council Street Party web site for more information.
Useful links
How to hold a Street Party: Streets Alive
Road Closure and Party/Fete information: The Department for Communities
Westminster council is urging residents to make a New Year’s resolution to step up their green credentials by recycling their Christmas trees.
Last year the Council recycled 40 tonnes – the equivalent to almost four London buses – and hopes to set a new record this year. It is easier than ever to recycle unwanted trees and in Westminster alone there are 19 recycling centres.
Westminster Council’s Cabinet Member for City Management, said: “Natural Christmas trees are part of many people’s traditional yuletide celebrations but they are often discarded at roadsides around the City when the festivities are over.
“It is far better to recycle the tree at one of the centres and help keep Westminster as green as possible – especially after the excesses of Christmas.
“After Christmas we concentrate on helping as many people as possible recycle their unwanted Christmas trees by taking them to the 19 temporary recycling points within Westminster, where these unwanted trees are turned into compost.”
The centres are open between January 3 – 18, and trees can be dropped off in designated points between 8am and 8pm.
Westminster council is urging residents to make a New Year’s resolution to step up their green credentials by recycling their Christmas trees.
Last year the Council recycled 40 tonnes – the equivalent to almost four London buses – and hopes to set a new record this year. It is easier than ever to recycle unwanted trees and in Westminster alone there are 19 recycling centres.
Westminster Council’s Cabinet Member for City Management, said: “Natural Christmas trees are part of many people’s traditional yuletide celebrations but they are often discarded at roadsides around the City when the festivities are over.
“It is far better to recycle the tree at one of the centres and help keep Westminster as green as possible – especially after the excesses of Christmas.
“After Christmas we concentrate on helping as many people as possible recycle their unwanted Christmas trees by taking them to the 19 temporary recycling points within Westminster, where these unwanted trees are turned into compost.”
The centres are open between January 3 – 18, and trees can be dropped off in designated points between 8am and 8pm.
The radical new fixed fare taxi service from the West End designed to boost the number of black cabs and help revellers get home safely has proved a resounding success following its first weekend trial – taking on more than 500 trips over two nights.
The Golden Fares scheme, which aims to give visitors to central London an accessible, easy to use and safe way of travelling home late at night and into the early hours on Fridays and Saturdays, and encourage revellers not to be tempted by touts, offers fixed fares to four London zones.
Operating from Leicester Square 10pm-4am on Friday and Saturday nights, passengers pay a fixed price up front to travel to the zones stretching as far as from Redbridge to Richmond and Croydon to Copthall, with the most expensive fare being £50, and the cheapest £20.
Westminster Council’s staff restructure has generated £14m worth of savings for local taxpayers – £2.4m more than initially predicted.
The council started to restructure its workforce in September last year as part of an internal efficiency drive which has since resulted in the deletion of almost 360 posts – around 100 from middle-management.
In addition, six major director posts have been removed and the council’s corporate management board has been reduced from 20 senior officers to a far smaller executive board of just seven, including the chief executive and six strategic directors.
Initial predictions of almost £12m worth of savings have since been recalculated to show that the council will generate just over £14.1m worth of savings by stripping out duplication and unnecessary layers of management.
Westminster Council’s adult social care services are among the best in the country, according to a recent report. The Care Quality commission rated Westminster overall as “excellent” in providing services to support adults and older people.
Westminster has continually set itself a high bar with the services it provides. The current economic climate and the spending challenges posed by the government’s comprehensive spending review will mean there will be changes to the way we deliver services across the council – including adult social care.
Needless bureaucracy costs Westminster Council almost £1 million a year – enough to cover the salaries of 26 teachers, 28 social workers or 44 street cleaners, the authority said today.
The council said there should be “a bonfire of red tape” as it had to provide Whitehall with more than 2,500 separate pieces of data covering everything from noise, planning and pollution to food safety, rubbish collection and parking.
It said wanted to end its dependence on central government grants because its business and domestic taxpayers and commercial income could pay for the services and investment Westminster needs. The move comes as Grant Shapps, minister for housing and local government, announced how the government would give councils more freedom from unnecessary regulation.
The council said the cost of reporting to Whitehall was £750,000 a year, but it could pay for all of its local services without going “cap in hand” to Ministers if it was given the power to retain a greater share of the £1bn worth of business rates it collects on behalf of central government.
Needless bureaucracy costs Westminster Council almost £1million a year – enough to cover the salaries of 26 teachers, 28 social workers or 44 street cleaners, the authority said today.
The council said there should be “a bonfire of red tape” as it had to provide Whitehall with more than 2,500 separate pieces of data covering everything from noise, planning and pollution to food safety, rubbish collection and parking.
It said wanted to end its dependence on central government grants because its business and domestic taxpayers and commercial income could pay for the services and investment Westminster needs. The move comes as Grant Shapps, minister for housing and local government, announced how the government would give councils more freedom from unnecessary regulation.
The council said the cost of reporting to Whitehall was £750,000 a year, but it could pay for all of its local services without going “cap in hand” to Ministers if it was given the power to retain a greater share of the £1bn worth of business rates it collects on behalf of central government.
