Councillors will be expected to bring an end to Glasgow’s bin crisis after the council election in May as satisfaction with cleansing services falls to the lowest level in over a decade.
During last week’s full council meeting, a motion was presented by the Labour group highlighting the findings of the Ipsos Mori 2021 Glasgow Household Survey, which revealed satisfaction with bin collections and street cleaning have fallen to their lowest levels in more than 10 years.
The motion also pointed out that nearly 40 per cent disagreed with the statement "I trust Glasgow City Council" in the 2021 Household Survey, which is a 12-point deterioration from 2017.
READ MORE: Millions to be invested in Glasgow neighbourhood cleansing teams but bulk uplift charge remains
And for the first time, more than 50 per cent agree with the statement: "The Council is too remote and impersonal."
The motion asked the council to condemn the falling levels of satisfaction and trust in the council over the past five years and said that good, high quality public services are the gateway to community empowerment.
Labour leader Councillor Malcolm Cunning said: “Five years ago the then leader of the opposition took to national newspapers and declared that they would turn Glasgow into a rival for Barcelona and Copenhagen.
“She set out a bold ambition to make the city so attractive and double its population. This was matched with promises that a new administration would fix the lights, clean up the streets and fix the pavements.
“The SNP manifesto declared that every Glaswegian deserves to live in a neighbourhood where services like street services and domestic waste are given the care and attention they deserve.
“To summarise, the people of Glasgow were promised real and positive change [but did not get it].”
Glasgow’s Green group thanked Labour for bringing the issues to the attention of the chamber but said solutions were needed to address the waste crisis.
Councillor Jon Molyneux said: “Glasgow deserves better but we have to show what better is. The green amendment grounds the solutions to Glasgow’s waste problems with communities, with workers with a commitment to co-design and eliminate waste at the source.
“It’s about changing the culture not just about changing the source to get to grips with these issues which are the most important for our citizens.
“I’m not surprised that Labour is not providing solutions to these problems. It is important to listen to the concerns of our citizens but it is also important that we offer solutions, work together and not close ourselves off from new ideas.”
The administration also pointed out that the city was recovering from a global pandemic and that the council had to set out a recovery plan.
SNP councillor Ricky Bell said: “We cannot ignore the fact that we have come through a global pandemic, a situation that the world has never seen - far less the city of Glasgow.
“I would like to put on record my thanks to our staff for the incredible way they responded to this pandemic. Some services may have had to have been scaled back or stopped in order to respond to the crisis.
“We are the only council to have carried out an Ipsos Mori survey during the pandemic. The results from that survey are challenging and they do provide officers with an up to date baseline from which to shape our covid recovery.
“If you don’t recognise covid happened, how are you going to plan for its recovery? We need a plan which allows us to recover from the most dramatic event we have ever seen in its history.”
After the motion and amendments were presented, the independent group moved that the Labour motion, amended by the Green amendment be passed.
This was eventually agreed by the majority of councillors despite the Greens abstaining from voting.
From May, councillors will now be asked to provide solutions to help clean Glasgow’s streets.
