The Chewing Gum Task Force was established by Defra and is run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy. The first tranche of a package worth up to £10 million will be spread over five years, of which Newham and Redbridge councils will jointly receive £70,000.

The funding will be used to purchase equipment to carry out deep cleaning to remove chewing gum stains from Newham’s streets, and install new signage to encourage people to bin their gum in future.
Councillor James Asser, Cabinet Member for Environment and Sustainable Transport said:
“Residents have made it clear to us that what they want to see is a cleaner, smarter borough.

“We are already undertaking a lot of action to tackle fly tipping and have recently enhanced our enforcement team to tackle day-to-day litter which includes dropping chewing gum. We are issuing fixed penalty notices of £150 to anyone who drops gum on our streets as its costs money to clean it up which could be spent on other services for residents.

“This grant will allow us to clean the streets, discourage people from dropping gum with new signage placed in high streets, and if they continue to drop gum on the streets they will be fined.”

As part of building a fairer Newham we will spend £40 million over the next 4 years to keep our streets and neighbourhoods clean and cut reported fly-tipping by 50 percent.