How To... organise a community

When an estate becomes a magnet for fly-tipping, it can be a hard cycle to break. However, there is a way to make a dent in this problem on a small budget and encourage local people to get together at the same time.

Lynn Charman, Leicester council’s community development officer in its housing department, had this in mind when she developed the Clean Up Braunstone campaign for the city’s notorious Braunstone estate. Last October she rallied a disparate group of volunteers to rid the area of dumped mattresses, garden waste, broken fences, litter and anything else they came across in a high-visibility campaign.

To replicate the scheme, first get all the relevant council departments on board, Charman advises. In Leicester, the project involved the cleaning services, grounds maintenance and landscaping departments. About 20 staff from these departments took part on the day. They also supplied litter pickers and vital equipment: hard hats for people working under trees, thick gloves, fluorescent jackets (essential if you’ve got a lot of heavy vehicles around) and lorries to take away bulky rubbish like fridges and mattresses.

Make full use of local voluntary groups. Charman joined up with Voluntary Action Leicester, which organises groups of volunteers on the estate, to locate willing hands. She also approached a nearby refugee and asylum centre which yielded several volunteers, a horticulture training centre, a church volunteering group and local policemen who wanted to improve relations with local people by mucking in. Hold the event during the summer and you can lever in help from youth groups too. Of 95 people that took part in Braunstone’s first event, 65 were under 15 and came to it from youth groups.

You may also get help from the Probation Service, which can provide people on community service. “They were keen to get involved – they do this sort of thing all the time,” Charman says.

Working with this group presented no problems, she adds – the only rule was that they were working in a separate part of the site to the under-16s. They also come with their own supervisors and often bring their equipment.

You will need a health and safety officer to complete a risk assessment at the start of the day and tell volunteers about emergency situations: if they find discarded needles, a scheme employee should deal with it and keep a “sharps bin” handy. There should be a registered first aider on site in case of accidents. The council’s cleaning services department should be able to supply them.

Running the scheme with volunteers should be quite cheap. “We have never had any funding for this project, we seem to always get it done on a shoestring,” Charman explains. “Anybody could do it if they really wanted to, the only cost we have is supplying refreshments at lunchtime.”

For a base at which people gathered to receive instructions the start of the day, have lunch and take breaks, Charman chose a church hall already used by one group of volunteers. Voluntary Action Leicester covered the cost of food, which was prepared by church volunteers with certificates in food hygiene preparation.

When you’ve finished, go back and do it all again every few months to stop litter building up again and break the cycle. Charman, who has organised eight days in the past year, says: “We are trying to send out a message that there are people on the estate that feel passionate about the area.”