Council first to be granted funding to remove chewing gum from streets

South Lanarkshire Council has received a significant sum of funding to rid the streets of chewing gum.

The £20,000 grant has been awarded to the local authority as part of a UK-wide chewing gum task force grant scheme.

The scheme was established by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy.

The task force is a new fund aimed at helping authorities clean chewing gum from the UK’s towns and cities.

South Lanarkshire is among the first councils – and one of four in Scotland – to benefit from the earliest lot of funding announcements from a package worth up to £10m, directly funded by major gum manufacturers.

The cash boost will allow the council to carry out deep cleaning to remove chewing gum stains from streets in the area, and to install new signs to encourage people to bin their gum.

Councillor Robert Brown, chair of the Community and Enterprise Resources Committee, said: “We’re delighted to have received this funding from the Chewing Gum Task Force, which will help us tackle the ongoing problem of gum staining, especially in our town centres and public spaces.

“We have already made a firm commitment to tackling the wider issue of litter and the blight it has on communities and this very specialist, and welcome funding will mean we can make an immediate start with this stickiest of problems.”

The funding will also enable the council to regularly use four specialist chewing gum removal machines, bought by Grounds Services and Economic Development earlier this year.

Between now and the end of the summer season, the machines will be deployed daily in areas identified by the team under the new initiative.