Street Warden News

Chewing gum and grafitti are to be blitzed by a £13,000 steam cleaning machine which will add more might to the street wardens’ armoury.

The new equipment should be up and running this summer – and when it’s not on cleansing duty it may double up as a hi-tech watering machine for the town’s floral displays!

"It’s a hot and cold steam cleaner which carries its own water supply and generator," says town centre manager Jonathan Newman. “It can heat up to a high enough temperature to remove chewing gum and grafitti.

"Not enough has been done to get rid of these eyesores. Chewing gum has just become part and parcel of the environment. It just stays stuck to the ground until it turns to the same colour as the pavement.

"It’s a job which will have to be done a paving slab at a time, but we’ll be concentrating on relatively new areas of paving that have become grubby, including the bus station, and the new pedestrian crossing on Regent Road."

Street wardens will play a key role in ensuring a rapid response to the appearance of grafitti, and it’s anticipated that the machine will also be used to clean-up neglected shop fronts.

"If you’ve got a shop which is boarded up and covered with posters you’ll probably only make it look worse if you tackle it with a bucket of water and a wire brush. With the new equipment you’ve got a hot water jet available with a hydraulic brush atttachment which will make light work of that."