Islington Council has launched a new Cleaner Islington
programme aimed at improving the cleanliness, safety, and overall liveability of the borough's neighbourhoods. The initiative, approved by the Executive on Thursday, July 30, 2026, consolidates existing services under a single framework with shared objectives.
The programme will focus on prevention, behaviour change, collaboration, and shared responsibility, underpinned by education, empowerment, and enforcement. Councillor Heather Staff, Executive Member for Community Safety and Neighbourhoods, highlighted the programme's ambitious nature and focus on behavioural change, while Councillor Rowena Champion, Executive Member for Climate, Environment & Transport, emphasized the integrated, joined-up approach and the importance of resident involvement.
Key aspects of the Cleaner Islington
programme include:
- Education: Raising awareness, encouraging positive behaviours, and making it easier for residents to report issues and contribute to environmental improvements. This includes working with schools, businesses, and communities to promote responsible waste and recycling disposal and the consequences of environmental crime. The programme will also support skills development and learning to enable greater participation in decision-making about the local environment and shared custodianship of spaces.
- Empowerment: Supporting residents, businesses, and community groups to take an active role in quality assessment, propose solutions, and co-design spaces. The programme aims to empower residents, businesses, and community groups by supporting them to take an active role in improving their local environment. This includes helping to inform action, making changes to service provision, co-designing spaces, and enabling connection to their environment and each other. The programme will build on existing initiatives like the Friends of Parks Groups, Recycling Champions, Gardening Groups, and Community Gardens, and will utilize the Love Clean Streets app to enable residents to report issues and provide feedback. The programme also emphasizes shared stewardship and community participation through volunteering, community clean-ups, and reuse/repair initiatives.
- Enforcement: Maintaining environmental standards and tackling offences like fly-tipping and littering through proportionate and intelligence-led action. Enforcement activity will focus on environmental crime such as fly-tipping, dog fouling, and littering. The approach will be intelligence-led, proportionate, and fair, with a clear focus on local priorities and residents' experience of their streets.
The programme also integrates the Lowest Waste Borough Delivery Plan,
aiming to reduce waste, increase recycling, and promote a circular economy. This includes improving recycling services, investing in infrastructure, and communicating with residents to encourage low-waste behaviours. The programme supports the ambition to become the 'Lowest Waste Borough' through an associated Delivery Plan. This plan aims to reduce waste, increase recycling, and promote a more circular economy. The Council will invest in infrastructure, service design, and communications to make recycling easier and more convenient, while delivering targeted campaigns to increase participation, reduce contamination, and minimize overall waste. The programme aligns with the North London Joint Waste Strategy, which prioritizes waste prevention, reuse, repair, maximizing recycling, and reducing the environmental impact of disposal.
Councillor Staff stated, Cleaner Islington is about improving our residents' everyday experience by creating streets and estates, parks and public spaces that are cleaner, safer, more attractive and more welcoming.
Councillor Champion added, This is very much about bringing this together under a single framework with shared objectives so stronger governance, common performance measures, clearer accountability and greater assurance for outcomes.
The success of the Cleaner Islington
programme will be measured through a combination of operational performance information and resident feedback. This includes indicators such as fly-tipping incidents, enforcement activity, resident satisfaction with their local area, recycling performance, Local Environmental Quality Survey (LEQS) results, and reports from the Love Clean Streets app, as well as resident complaints. The programme aims for visible improvements in neighbourhood quality and residents' experience of their neighbourhoods and the borough.
The programme will be delivered over an initial 18-month period, with the first six months dedicated to mobilisation, including confirming governance and performance measures. The subsequent 12 months will focus on implementation and embedding the programme, using data and resident feedback to drive continuous improvement. The Cleaner Islington
Programme is planned for an initial 18-month period, with the first six months focused on mobilisation and the following 12 months on implementation and embedding the programme. The programme aims to refine delivery approaches based on performance data and resident feedback to ensure a sustainable long-term model for improving neighbourhood and borough cleanliness. The Lowest Waste Borough Delivery Plan, which is part of the programme, sets a long-term framework aligned with the North London Joint Waste Strategy 2025–2040.
The Cleaner Islington Programme does not commit any additional financial resources over and above existing budgets within the department. However, there are aspirations that may require additional funding, which will need to be considered as part of the budget planning process.
Read the full decisions from the Executive meeting here: Decisions 30th Jul 2026 Executive
