“What is the Council doing about all the rubbish and litter?” is a question us councillors are asked regularly. Well the Council spends hundreds of thousands of pounds each year cleaning up behind dirty people.

We should be proud of where we live, it has a lot going for it. Within a stones throw of the M6 we have the Rough Wood Country Park and not far from our town centre we have Willenhall Memorial Park and many more smaller areas of green open space which is there to be enjoyed.

Then there’s the other side of the coin. Many of our green spaces are the target for fly tippers. Our streets and shopping areas are covered in litter. Now we all know that there is no litter fairy who comes down when we are not looking and dumps tonnes of litter and rubbish on us over night. All this littering and fly tipping is done by people who live, work and drive through our area. People who have absolutely no respect for the vast majority of us and where we live who dispose of our litter and rubbish responsibly.

As we said earlier, cleaning up after these people who have no respect for us and where we live costs the Council hundreds of thousands of pounds. That’s hundreds of thousands of pounds that the Council can’t spend on keeping libraries open and providing vital front line services to the elderly, young and the sick at a time when the Westminster Government has committed to reducing the support it gives the Borough of Walsall by a further £80 million over the next four years. That’s a further £80 million on top of the £84 million it has cut from Walsall’s budget since 2010.

We need your help. We need all those out there who think nothing of scattering litter around like confetti to STOP LITTERING and have some respect for where you live. Those of us who don’t litter need to be challenging those who do.

And the Council? What should it be doing? It should be going on the offensive by making examples of those who continue to litter and fly tip. Discussions are well advanced within the new Liberal Democrat/Labour administration to step up enforcement and impose automatic fines on those who cost the rest of us so dearly.

The majority of people don’t litter. Working together we can change the attitude of those who do.

Content published and promoted by Roy Sheward on behalf of Dan Barker (Liberal Democrats) all at 144 Redhouse Lane, Walsall, WS5 0DB