Milton Keynes Council is under massive financial pressure. In order to cope with the funding shortfall the Council is to trial new ways of cleaning street signs. The aim is to spruce up the Borough and new City, by pulling together limited staff resources for part of a week. 

The Council has pulled together staff to intensively clean up the signs in certain areas of the city.

It has arranged for one team of staff to undertake some sign cleaning as a trial.  Three areas have been selected and they will spend a couple of days in each area.

• Newport Pagnell South
• Newport Pagnell North
• Bletchley.

Cllr Martin Gowans, Cabinet member for Public Realm said, “Our public realm funding has been dramatically reduced by Central Government cuts. In fact there will be no Government money after 2020. So we are working to make our limited funds go further. This idea of sprucing up the road signs may seem a trivial thing to do. But we know from resident surveys and feedback that clean signs matter. So we aim to focus some staff time on blitzing areas, especially when roads are closed for other work.”    

The blitz on dirty street signs will also allow the Council to assess productivity/methods/costs and use this to inform how we can support this activity in the future. The Council is putting extra capital funds in to cleaning street signs. The team approach will make the most efficient use of that money. It will deliver the best Value for Money.   

Cllr Gowans concluded, “We have picked a combination of rural areas, older towns like Newport Pagnell and Bletchley to trial the blitz. If the sprucing up works well we will roll it out across all of Milton Keynes. I believe this trial shows that we will be proud and clean in Milton Keynes despite the continued Government cuts.”