Bolton Council is set to invest £300,000 in new staff and equipment to help clean up the town.
Six new Neighbourhood Care Operatives are being recruited to work on a range of seasonal tasks.
These include street cleansing, clearing fly tipping, cutting grass, planting flowers and tidying shrubs, maintaining roads and clearing fallen leaves.
Emptying of litter bins at weekends on busy roads leading into Bolton town centre will return, after this was stopped in 2022 as a cost saving measure.
Bolton’s growing army of volunteer litter pickers will benefit from more support, with a dedicated new operative and vehicle to collect green bags of rubbish that have been gathered at litter picking events.
One of the new operatives will work alongside the council’s education and enforcement team and be trained to issue fixed penalty notices for fly tipping.
The additional staff will join the council’s Neighbourhood Services team, which carries out street cleansing and grounds maintenance work and is split into three teams in the north, south and west of Bolton.
Neighbourhoods across the borough are inspected and cleansed on a five-weekly basis throughout the year, with grass on council land cut every five weeks, weather and resources permitting.
The new investment reverses cuts to street cleansing services and grounds maintenance brought in 2022.
Those cuts aimed to save £298,000 from the council’s budget and led to the loss of nine operatives.
Bolton Council’s Executive Member for Climate Change and Environment, Cllr Richard Silvester, said:
“The council has recognised the pressures that have been placed on street cleansing services since savings efficiencies were imposed and has acted decisively to improve matters.
“Thanks to our new investment and the hard work of our expanded teams, I am confident that residents will soon see less litter, cleaner streets and a more welcoming environment in our town centres.”