Town centre community clean up to take place next week – Executive Board member to help remove fly posters Council itself won’t touch

A team of volunteers will take to the streets next week to take part in one of the town’s community clean-up events.

Organised by Gresford Councillor Andrew Atkinson, members of the ‘Wrexham Business Group Community Interest Company‘ and Gateway Church, the clean-up will take place at Bank Street on Sunday 24th June at 10am.

The event is one of a series to have taken part in recent years, with an inaugural community clean-up taking place in spring 2015.

The clean-up’s bring together volunteers from the Town Centre Forum, the local community, some councillors, local businesses and Gateway Church. They are also ‘supported’ by Wrexham County Borough Council and Keep Wales Tidy, as well as large multi-nationals like Co-op, Greggs and McDonalds.

Previous events have seen volunteers tackle Lord Street, Regent Street, Hope Street and Henblas St.

“It’s all about doing anything we can to take pride in our town,” explained Cllr Atkinson.

“We will be tackling graffiti, fly-posters and mess left in empty shops as well as sprucing up the town and giving things a lick of paint.

“As always, Gateway Church deserve special recognition for what they do to assist us in the town with these clean-up days. Once again they have changed their church service time to the late afternoon so that they can bring the whole church along to help.

“It’s amazing and its a really big help.”

Recently the issue of fly posting removal was raised at the Town Centre Forum (our report here) and it appeared the message to the Forum was the Council was unable to remove fly posters due to them being placed on private property – despite clean up days such as these being referred to where such a barrier has never been a problem.

Since the meeting it was pointed out that Kingdom Enforcement, famed for their ticketing of smaller waste cigarette ends, are allowed to taken action on private land. The Forum will be told the legalities of the fly posters at their next meeting.

We have been told that the fly posting that was removed after the Forum meeting was not removed by Wrexham Council.

Some of the fly posters in town have been removed – although due to how some were affixed it seems the remnants will be there for a long while yet pic.twitter.com/JxgibKR5R0

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) June 7, 2018

We did ask Wrexham Council if any enforcement action was being taken against those fly postering, as the UK Government define it as a criminal offence and some council’s have issued fines (and themselves cancelled posters!), and if not, why that was not possible.

We have not yet been given any official verdict, however it seems the Council are ‘supporting’ this clean up, and at least one Executive Board member will be present at the removal of fly posters.

The issue of empty shops and the impact of their disused frontages is a long standing one. Back in 2015 three councillors, who are all now on the Executive Board were pictured outside the old Iceland store launching a campaign to sort out unsightly frontages of empty stores. This was followed by another town centre campaign that resulted in good looking vinyls on some empty shop frontages.

The prediction at the recent Forum meeting that the posters will just breed more appears true, as after one sign appears to have been scraped off – another is in its place this week along with other signs on street furniture.

If you’d like to help or would like more information you can contact Andrew Atkinson at [email protected]