Llanelli MP, Dame Nia Griffith, has called on Plaid Cymru run Carmarthenshire County Council to up its game on street cleaning and waste collection following long running criticism from local residents about the state of local streets and areas across Llanelli.
The situation has come to head once again recently following the Council’s failure to plan ahead for the festive period resulting in missed waste and recycling collections with bins and rubbish bags being left out in the streets for several days and litter and debris left to spill out on pavements and streets around the town.
Commenting on the problems, Dame Nia Griffith MP said:
“Unfortunately, the complete shambles that happened over the Christmas and New Year was not just an isolated example of how poorly Plaid Carmarthenshire Council are performing when it comes to keeping our streets clean and tidy.
Over the last couple of years, Carmarthenshire County Council have chosen to cut back on their street cleaning budget. In addition to less street cleaning, they have removed litter bins because they do not want to pay someone to empty them, which actually makes the problem much worse, or where they have kept them, they do not empty them often enough so they are overflowing.
I am regularly contacted by residents asking me to take up complaints about late waste collections and the poor state of our streets. They are getting tired with hearing the same old excuses time and again and feel that their concerns are being ignored.”
Dame Nia said she is also worried that the problems are only set to get worse as Plaid councillors had put forward proposals as part of its 2025/26 Budget to further cut frontline local cleansing services despite receiving an increase in support from Welsh Government for the forthcoming year of £14.7m and asking hard pressed local families to pay an average of up to £192 per year more in Council Tax next year.
She added:
“The Council is failing to deliver on basic services like street cleaning, waste collections, litter picking and litter bins provision and yet are now asking local taxpayers once more to effectively pay more for less.
Their lack of care for Llanelli gives a dreadful impression to people visiting the area. As they will be confirming their budget in the next few weeks, I can only stress how important it is to be able to take pride in our town, both for residents and visitors, and I am asking the Plaid Cymru Cabinet to really focus on these issues and get things right.”
Carmarthenshire County Council are currently consulting on their 2025/26 Budget which includes cuts of £220k to road sweeping / gulley cleansing, £100k to sweeping, litter picking and litter bin provision in the Tyisha Ward ( which includes Llanelli Town Centre), £100k to road surface dressing and £196k to winter gritting. Proposals also include increasing Council Tax by up to 12%, equivalent to an increase of £192.34 per year for a Band D property.