The latest public satisfaction survey shows most of our residents really like living in Sutton, and the Borough achieves higher satisfaction scores than most comparable London Boroughs.

Amongst the things that bug people, however, is the litter people drop. The Council has taken new powers, including to impose an £80 on-the-spot fine, enforced by new litter wardens.

An 11 tonne mountain of rubbish, one day’s worth of litter was created in the middle of Sutton High Street on 6 February as part of the anti-litter campaign to change bad habits and save council tax payers money.

The pile, over 10ft tall and just as wide in clear plastic bags, demonstrated how much street litter is collected each day at a cost of £4m a year. That is the equivalent of running a library service for a year, repairing 100,000 potholes, providing 210 residential care places for the elderly or building half a primary school.

The anti-litter event also included a display of fly tipping collected from the Borough’s streets. Despite the Council having a dedicated service for collecting larger goods, some people still fly tip at a cost of £170,000 a year to clean up. Fly tipping can include anything from TVs and sofas to large tipper trucks dumping commercial waste. There have been particular problems at certain roads in our Ward such as Prior Avenue.