DUP Alderman says Mid & East Antrim Council has “failed miserably” on street cleaning

Carrickfergus Castle DUP Alderman Billy Ashe MBE has criticised Mid and East Antrim Borough Council’s street cleaning performance, claiming it has “failed miserably”.

Alderman Ashe was responding to a score of 70 per cent recorded in the council’s Corporate Plan update, awarded by Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful (KNIB) for the effectiveness of street cleansing — which measures littering, graffiti and general maintenance.

Mid and East Antrim Borough Council achieved a cleaning index score of 70 per cent against a target of 66 per cent. According to the council, KNIB uses the Street Cleansing Index to help ensure public spaces are kept “clean and welcoming”.

However, Alderman Ashe said the street outside Carrickfergus Civic Centre, where “important guests” were taken following an event at Knockagh Monument in Greenisland, “had not been brushed in a very long time”.

Speaking at a recent council meeting, he said:

“We pat ourselves on the back because we get 70 per cent of somebody’s target and the Northern Ireland average is 66 per cent. Can I remind the council, street cleaning is a statutory obligation. The target is 100 per cent. We failed it miserably rather than patting ourselves on the back saying we got 70.”

Street cleaning was one of the issues highlighted in the council’s Corporate Plan update for April 2024 – March 2025.

Alderman Ashe also noted that 370,000 trees had been planted, questioning whether they were planted by the “Forestry Commission” and whether the figure was “just another way of presenting statistics”.

The report states that the “majority” of these trees were planted at Woodburn Forest outside Carrickfergus. The council had a target of planting 100,000 across the borough under the Climate Canopy Project.

Turning to energy efficiency, Alderman Ashe told members that despite the council’s targets, when he visited Carrickfergus Town Hall on “one of the extremely hot days”, the heating was on.

The report notes that eight energy-saving projects were delivered during the 12-month period, including LED lighting upgrades at Carrickfergus Town Hall, Carrickfergus Civic Centre, Larne Leisure Centre and People’s Park, Ballymena, along with new solar installations at Sullatober Depot, Carrickfergus, and Portglenone Marina.

He also raised concerns about public consultation methods, recalling a survey from several years ago which showed that 48 per cent of residents did not want to contact the council by email.

“We have conveniently forgotten about that. We have an older community who do not use email,” he said.

“The council is not making it easy for people to consult with us. We have to start seriously thinking about these things.”

Alderman Ashe called on the interim chief executive to hold “a genuine consultation” with councillors on such matters.

Interim chief executive Valerie Watts said she was “more than happy to take these issues away and have them examined”.

“However, you are a man who is very much in tune with my thinking about the avenues the public have for contacting council and we very much need to modernise how we do things in terms of making a whole host of contact avenues available to members of the public,” she stated.

“I fully appreciate there are people who work set hours in the day and who do not get any down time within which they can make these complaints or indeed if they ever wish to compliment us on anything. We seriously need to modernise a lot of that.”

She added that she was “dismayed” to hear about the street cleaning issue on the day of the Knockagh memorial event.