Following a request by residents, the Head of Environment & Leisure gave a presentation updating on environmental services in the Eastern area.

He provided area based statistics on fly-tipping and enforcement, broken down by Ward, which showed that Teynham and Lynsted had the highest number of reports of fly-tipping over 2024-2025. SBC ran a fly-tip hotspot list and the Environmental Response Team went out to investigate any reports of fly-tips before the cleansing contractor removed the items. It was difficult to get a formal outcome for enforcement as SBC needed to be able to identify the dumper.

SBC were working with the contractor to improve the street cleansing service and in particular were working on improving reporting methods. The Head of Environment & Leisure urged anyone who noticed areas of littering to report it via the SBC call centre or website. Deep cleans regularly took place and if any problems could be reported to SBC they would be added to the deep-clean programme.

Some roads were not safe for operatives to work on without traffic management which took place in the evenings and overnight to minimise disruption.

The following comments were raised:

·       Were the three road sweepers operating in Swale allocated one each to Faversham, Sittingbourne and Sheppey?;

·       was it the case that one of the road sweepers was not adequate?;

·       some litter bins in rural areas were still not being emptied;

·       how closely did SBC work with Network Rail regarding fly-tipping or heavy littering on their land?

·       how did SBC work with other local authorities to address fly-tipping on borough boundaries? and

·       an incident of fly-tipping on Preston Lane, Faversham, was reported on 17 December 2025 and had still not been cleared;

The Head of Environment & Leisure responded that road sweepers were not assigned to a geographical location but by job type as there was a large, medium and small mechanical sweeper in the fleet. They operated in areas suited to their size, for example the large sweeper worked on roads such as the A2 and the small sweeper was able to operate on pavements. Regarding rural litter bins, there was a list of all litter bins in the borough, but he acknowledged some older bins might be missing and there was an ongoing litter bin project taking place to identify all bins and to replace the old stock. The aim was to put a QR (Quick Response) code on each bin to make reporting issues quicker. Once all bins had been identified, SUEZ would be able to put in place an efficient route to empty them. SBC always tried to contact landowners, such as Network Rail, to rectify littering or fly-tipping issues. SBC worked with other local authorities to tackle fly-tipping issues on boundaries including joint enforcement operations, all authorities should be working to the Government Code of Conduct for Litter. There was a technical ‘blip’ with reports of fly-tipping not going through to the team, this had now been rectified and the Head of Environment & Leisure would follow up on the incident referred to if the person sent him the details.