ON THE STREET

War veterans have been asked to pay street cleaning fees for a Remembrance Day march. For more than 80 years the old soldiers in the village of Osmotherley, North Yorkshire have honoured the war dead in time-honoured fashion. Now the 15 veterans who march just 50 yards along the village high street to the war memorial are being asked to pay street cleaning fees by the local council. Colonel David Black, chairman of Osmotherley's Royal British Legion branch said, "This year we applied for a road closure and the council sent a letter stating that if any street cleaning was needed it would charge us £54 an hour."

Colonel Black, a former officer in the Queen's Lancashire Regiment who spent 32 years in the Army, is also angry the veterans have been asked for a risk assessment by the police. He said, "I don't remember doing a risk assessment before going to do my five tours in Northern Ireland or for my spell in Aden. I am determined the march will go ahead but some small groups might look at this and not go ahead and that would be a very grave shame." The Royal British Legion claim veterans groups all over the country are running into masses of red tape.

The Home Office issued guidelines three years ago asking councils and police forces to support veterans' parades. Now the Legion is asking councils to follow that advice in discussions about Remembrance Day marches. Hambleton District Council denied that it was picking on the Osmotherley veterans. A spokesman said, "They were sent a standard letter that goes out to all requests for road closures. It is more for events like street fairs and we don't envisage any problems with the Remembrance Day march. In future, references to the street cleaning will be taken out of the letter." (Source: Daily Mail, Oct/07)

Housing estates across the region are "swamped with litter". Fast food is also a problem as not only has the amount of fast food litter increased by 12%, but leftover burgers, pizza and kebabs that people throw on the floor have caused pavements to be caked with grease. Vomit, urine, oil and chewing gum, which was found trodden into 94% of town centre streets are leaving bad stains.

The areas suffering most from this were local shopping precincts and needy neighbourhoods, with around 70% of these deemed "below par". Alan Woods, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy, said although the public should take responsibility for the way it treats the streets, local councils should also shoulder some of the blame. "The East Midlands may be losing out on visitors and businesses choosing to relocate here, because some council managers don't plan properly, listen to their resident's concerns, or equip their street cleaners with the tools for the job," he said.

Low quality street cleaning was an issue. The survey's researchers watched street cleaners in action on 38 occasions, but only on five occasions did they get the area tidy. All 10,000 sites across England, which included alleyways, bus stops, residential streets and picnic sites, checked by the campaign were graded "good", "satisfactory", "unsatisfactory" or "poor". All English regions scored an overall unsatisfactory mark for cleaning up rubbish, with the East Midlands, North East, London, North West, Yorkshire and the West Midlands having the worst problems.

Allowed

Unsupervised juveniles out on the street at midnight.

Youths smoking joints on the street.

Youths driving stolen cars.

Gangs of youths loitering on the streets for hours at a time.

Repeatedly trespassing and walking over other people's gardens.

Holding three-hour parties with alcohol and/or drugs in the street.

Under-age drinking.

Being drunk and incapable of standing up on the street.

Vomiting profusely on the pavement outside a neighbour's house.

Urinating in a neighbour's hedge.

Excessive use of obscene language in the street.

Loud verbal threats of violence and verbal abuse in the street.

An unhelpful response from the police telephone operator.

Not Allowed

Getting a prompt response from the police on any of these matters.

Robert and James Pritchard were nicked by two cops who said playing football in the street with a ten-year-old neighbour had caused an obstruction. They were summoned for a two-day trial before a district judge, with their confiscated ball used as an exhibit, in a court case costing taxpayers £10,000.

Robert said, “People are mugged and houses broken into, but obviously playing football’s a bigger crime. We were only helping the lad get into his school team. There was no loud noise.” Their lawyer Nigel Ford said, “If they are found guilty, the maximum fine is about £250.” Police said, “There is a high level of complaints about this kind of activity.”