Practical help for our Wombles and litter kickers

These are just some of the 70+ bags collected in one community action morning by 20+ Penny Lane Wombles. Just imagine what Liverpool would like without our army of selfless volunteers.

Liverpool’s Liberal Democrats have tabled a motion to next week’s council meeting calling for practical assistance to be given to the army of wombles, litter kickers and Park Friends who keep vast areas of our public spaces clean and tidy.

Liberal Democrat Leader Cllr Richard Kemp says, “As I walk around the street of Liverpool 18, I am aware of the great work done by our Penny Lane Wombles. As there have been successive cutbacks in public funds for a variety of services it is the volunteers who have stepped in to fill the gap in this and many other areas of activity.

On a recent community clean up in the Penny Lane area 20+ volunteers worked together and took more than 70 bags of rubbish off the streets. Over the course of a month, they take out many times that amount. Just imagine what our streets would look like if they were not there.

But our volunteer army need help in the face of threatened council budgets. Church Ward councillors have supplied £1,000 of equipment to the Wombles in this financial year from our neighbourhood fund but that fund is threatened by budget cuts over the next three years. We cannot expect our volunteers in our streets and parks to not only go out all weathers cleaning up after us but also to raise the funds for the work that they do.

That is why we need to find ways of helping these groups across the city. Our motion sets out a number of ways of doing this including bulk purchase of supplies, regular contact with the Street Service teams; and finding external sources of grants and funding to help them.

The motion will not be discussed at the Council but will trigger a report to be presented to the Neighbourhood Services Committee where we hope that practical suggestions to help our selfless volunteers will be agreed by all Parties in recognition of their incredible work.

The Motion from the Liberal Democrats is included here in its entirety.

Council welcomes the work of all the volunteer litter pickers who pick up hundreds of bags of litter from our street every week. It recognises that our streets would be far less presentable without their work.

In a desire to help these groups the Neighbourhood Services Directorate be requested to convene a meeting of representatives of all these groups with a view to discussing how to help them by:

Finding inside and outside the council grants to help them continue their work and enable them to purchase necessary equipment.

Consider ways of using our bulk purchasing of litter pickers, bags and hoops to enable them to be cost effective.

Establish protocols with LSSL to arrange regular collections of filled bags especially those that relate to specific action days.

Establish protocols and support from the Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority to assist the teams in separating recyclable stuff such as tin cans in order them to both be recycled and to defray the costs of the work.