Community clean up groups have been left perplexed after the council spent £100k to clean up streets but had little to show for its work.

A Freedom of Information Request by The London Road Gazette can reveal that of the £103,000 allocated to the two-year ‘CleanSheffield’ project, £77,374 went towards the Project Officer’s salary, with an extra £4,566 going towards their travel costs.

But after The London Road Gazette submitted a second FOI to the council, officials were forced to admit that they could not prove what had been achieved.

A statement said: “Sheffield City Council does not hold any information about what the council believes they have achieved with the CleanSheffield initiative.”

Community clean up groups have been infuriated by the news.

Phil Vintin, of Sheffield Litter Pickers, said: “If that’s how we spend over £100,000, I think we need to have a bit more oversight on the council.

“When they’ve lauded it in the press, talking about all the great things they’re going to do about litter and that’s how it’s spent, they need to be assessed as to where the money’s going.

“Paying so much of the budget to the Project Officer is self-defeating. If you’re going to do a project, the money should go on the project – if you’re spending three quarters of the budget on the Officer’s wage, what are you actually hoping to get done?

“You employ a person to do the scheme, but then you have no money to actually do the scheme with.”

Of the money that was not spent on staff and travel, the remaining £21,060 was spent on “direct costs”, including the costs of resident engagement, surveying and printing of materials/graphic design, as well as membership costs for the Chamber of Commerce and purchasing a register of Chamber of Commerce Members.

Keep Britain Tidy, which worked in partnership with Sheffield City Council on the project, says on its website: “The aim was to encourage the people of Sheffield to take pride in their great city and to do their bit to help – by not dropping litter and by binning any litter they see on the ground.”

However, the subject has been hotly discussed within the Sheffield Litter Pickers group for some time, with members scratching their heads as to where the money could possibly have gone, with little to no improvements seeming to have been made.

Mr Vintin claims that he has asked various members of staff the question of what has been done with the project over the last two years, yet has been met without an answer each time.

The only immediately noticeable evidence of any change within the city is a number of bins dotted around the city being branded with a #CleanSheffield hashtag sticker.

The hashtag though has been scarcely used on social media, with tweets containing the tagline occurring nowadays on roughly a weekly basis.

In response to a tweet by Sheffield City Council (@SheffCouncil), which celebrated a commendation from the Government’s department of Environment, rural and food affairs on the cleanliness of some of its roadsides, many users responded with disgruntled remarks:

Well done, but I wonder if they looked at Sheffield as a whole and took into account all the grot spots?

SCC have no anti-littering strategy. They don't work with local businesses. Only main streets get cleaned by Amey. Local activists are not consulted re bin locations. — Love Our Streets (@loveourstreets) October 25, 2019

What a joke. There is no point in my 4.5 mile journey into city centre where I cannot see litter. #sheffield is a tip — derek gold (@goodbadandtroll) October 26, 2019

Nice picture of out in the countryside, try a pic of just about any Sheffield inner city street… not so pretty then is it! 🤬 — Question Everything… (@Kavvasakiman) October 25, 2019

A spokesperson for Sheffield City Council said:

“The Councils’ Clean Sheffield campaign, which launched in 2017, in conjunction with Keep Britain Tidy, was an ambitious campaign targeted at businesses, community groups and individuals which encouraged people to take pride in their local areas by supporting litter picks, as well as helping to spread the word about the importance of keeping Sheffield clean and tidy.

“Work on the campaign started with a city wide perceptions survey, which gave the council a reliable source of data for each individual ward of the city and identified what street cleanliness issues were most important to people in each community. From this we were able to identify three areas in which to pilot the campaign.

“Numerous contacts were made with businesses, community groups and individuals in the three pilot areas during the campaign period, who pledged to take responsibility for litter levels in their immediate vicinity and pledge stickers can still be seen in windows across the city today.

“The extensive data and insight collected from key hotspot areas remains invaluable and puts the council in a favourable position should we acquire funding to support further projects in the future.

“Aside from campaign specific activity, combatting litter remains a top priority for the council and since January 2019, 1,469 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPN’s) have been issued to tackle the minority of people who continue to drop litter.

“In addition to enforcement, there are many local voluntary groups across the city that continue to dedicate their own time to helping clean up local communities.

“Earlier this year, the cleanliness of the city’s roads was recognised by central government, with DEFRA congratulating the council for maintaining a consistently high standard of roadside cleanliness.”