Despite disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Barking and Dagenham Council is taking advantage of quieter town centres to carry out essential cleaning over the next 10 days.

Starting 28 April, the street cleaning crew will use an environmentally safe cleaning product to tackle stains and grease while disinfecting public areas. 

Councillor Syed Ghani, Cabinet Member for Public Realm, said: “We know our residents value their borough and want to see it as clean as possible.

“We’re carrying out our usual cleaning across the borough and sprucing up our town centres as part of the normal work rota.

“As always, our priorities are the safety of our workforce and our residents so we’re taking advantage of the streets being quieter due to lockdown.

“This makes it easier for our staff to carry out their work while maintaining social distancing and keeping two metres away from other workers, as well as any members of the public who are out and about for essential reasons.

“A number of councils are using this quieter time opportunity to deep clean town centres, carry out this type of work, and we’ve had lots of a great deal of support and positive feedback from our residents as our bin crews work really hard to collect household waste during the lockdown over the past month or so.”

Last year the Council invested in new vehicles to clean up the borough, including 18 new trucks to help speed up the collection of over 117,000 bins that get emptied each week.