Hereford BID Blitzs Stained Streets

Clean and welcoming streets has been the aim of the Hereford Business Improvement (Hereford BID) as they use their £10,000 specialised cleaning machine to remove badly stained pavements in Hereford over the summer. There is now further good news as the company celebrates the award of a £3000 grant by Hereford City Council to support staff costs necessary for the work.

Mike Truelove, CEO for the Hereford BID said “The pavement staining you see normally arises in May/ June when the gulls become particularly active and seek food by ripping open unprotected refuse bags. When the sacks are collected, it is common for the contents to spill out which can range from dry waste to cooking oil – without the right equipment, and a routine cleaning regime, these substances penetrate the porous pavements and look disgusting and unattractive for long periods of time. As no one has the equipment to do this, we must step in for the sake of our members and the local economy”.

The cleaning of the pavements is not without controversy. 15 years ago, the Council’s contractors (at the time) would clean the city centre with a deep steam treatment each day. Unfortunately, that equipment is no longer held. Mike added “The cost of our treatments is labour intensive, and we focus the service on our levy paying members. In addition, if they need their premises cleaned, we will help them with that too. The partnership with Hereford City Council is a fantastic expansion to this project and has enabled us to include more streets in the city centre – we are very grateful for their support”.

So far, the Hereford BID have cleaned Widemarsh Street, Bridge Street. St Peter’s Street, King Street and parts of High Town, with further plans to cover Eign Gate, Broad Street and Commercial Road. A parallel project and further successful partnership between the Hereford BID and Hereford City Council has run over the last 2 years to provide protective gull covers that businesses and residents can place their sacks in – this helps to limit the supply of food and in turn minimises street staining.