Trolley good show...

Councillor Marilyn Fielding, Liverpool’s executive member for Safer Stronger Communities

Council workers have put up a "trolly good show" by clearing the city of abandoned shopping carts.

The city is workong with major retailers such as Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Safeway to develop a new squad (known as the ‘enforcement trolley dollies’) to make sure any missing trolleys are returned within 24 hours at the most and usually within a few hours.

The initiative will prevent blight on the city’s streets and put the dampers on something which has become a byword for inner city decay.

Councillor Marilyn Fielding, Liverpool’s executive member for safer, Stronger Communities, said: “This initiative will help clear up something that really irritates people. If I see an abandoned shopping trolley it makes my blood boil as there is no excuse for just leaving them in somebody’s neighbourhood. They are obviously necessary for shopping but when left abandoned in the street they look horrible and are often used for anti-social activities.”

The innovative scheme costs the council, and therefore council taxpayers nothing, as the cost is being borne by the supermarkets who benefit by avoiding enforcement action and any resulting bad publicity.

A three month trial to collect the trolleys has proved a great success and will now be rolled out across the city. Workers will be on hand to identify trolleys within a half mile radius of most supermarket stores.

Cath Green, Liverpool’s executive director for Community Services, said: “This excellent initiative allows us to free up neighbourhood officers to do more work within their communities and rids us of an all too common and unpleasant sight.”

Since April 2008, more than 3,178 wayward trolleys have been recovered from the city’s streets. The scheme will help clean up Liverpool during its Year of the Environment.

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