The pledges - enhancing life in Salford

The council has a number of responsibilities around the sustainability and improvement of the local environment. We oversee a range of activities such as street cleaning, household refuse collection, pollution control, waste management, recycling schemes and street scene maintenance.

The council is responsible for the maintenance, improvement and development of housing in the city and for making grants available to older homes, offering help to adapt the homes of elderly and disabled people and working in partnership to build new housing across the city. All councils are expected to take an overview of the housing needed in their area and to make the best use of all the resources available, working with other organisations. Council housing is managed on behalf of the council by separate organisations.

The council has a range of transport responsibilities from traffic regulation and residential car parking, to road safety and provision of concessionary bus passes. The council is also involved in developing cycle ways and improving public footpaths and rights of way and we work with bus and rail companies to improve their local public transport networks.

What went well in 2009/10

• We gave almost 2,200 local people housing advice through Salford Home Search.
• We launched an updated green waste recycling service in July 2009 to over 45,000 households.
• We issued over 700 fixed penalty notices for littering and dog fouling and reduced reports of fly tipping by 33%.
• We recruited local people who collectively provided 5,000 volunteer hours in parks and countryside sites. In addition over 30,000 people attended events within our parks.

Our challenges

• Salford needs to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and we are committed to increase recycling rates to 50% by 2020.
• We will develop a choice of quality housing to meet residents' needs by building new council homes.
• The UK government has committed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and we have a clear plan of action in Salford to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 40% by 2013.

What we will do

To provide an accessible and sustainable recycling service we will:

• Provide refuse collection and recycling services that are responsive to customer needs including assisted collections and services that meet the requirements of all residents.

To give residents a choice of quality housing to meet their needs we will:

• Ensure investment of £56 million to improve conditions in public and private sector housing.
• Build 101 new council homes.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions we will:

• Make council buidlings as energy efficient as possible.
• Make street lighting energy efficient.
• Improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles.

This page was last updated on 10 May 2011