Fri, 22 June 2012
A major clean-up operation will hit Hounslow’s roads from Monday (25 June) to spruce up the borough and get the streets spic and span ahead of the London 2012 Games.
Operation Clean Sweep will focus on priority areas including major routes such as the A4 and A312, the Olympic Route Network (ORN), and also the Torch relay route through the borough.
Cllr Ruth Cadbury, Hounslow’s lead member for the 2012 Olympics, said: "Thousands of people involved in the Games will pass through Hounslow, from athletes and officials to visitors from home and abroad, and we want them to see the borough at its best.
"As well as the main routes, we’re going to be doing more intensive cleaning in town centres, outside tube and rail stations and on other local roads that may be used as ‘gateways’ to the Games."
Work will begin on the priority areas from Monday, which includes the A4 Great West Road beneath the M4 elevated section in Brentford and from the Chiswick roundabout to the Hogarth roundabout.
Two weeks later, from 9 July, work will begin on the Torch relay route from Kew Bridge, through Brentford High Street and London Road, Hounslow High Street and Lampton Road up to Lampton Park. A final ‘deep cleanse’ will take place in the days leading up to the relay on 24 July, and teams will be out on the day itself, just in advance of and following behind the relay procession.
Cllr Colin Ellar, Hounslow’s deputy leader and cabinet member for environment, added: "We have a street cleaning programme in place, but for an event of this scale, when the eyes of the world will be on us, we will try to make every effort that the borough is looking its best.
"That’s why we’re enhancing the service from June to September, with a daily cleaning regime in some priority areas that don’t already have it."
The enhanced teams will include litter picking teams on daily scheduled routes backed up by two rapid response teams which will patrol the priority areas, picking up bags of collected litter, clearing away any dumped rubbish and doing what else is necessary to keep these areas clean and tidy.
Information on the Torch relay and community events along the route are available on Hounslow’s Summer of Celebration pages at www.facebook.com/hounslowcouncil.