Coventry City Council has been awarded £24,000 to help clean chewing gum from the city’s pavements, as part of a national scheme backed by the gum industry itself.
The money comes from the Chewing Gum Task Force, a scheme run by the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy and funded by major manufacturers including Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle.
The manufacturers have pledged up to £10 million over five years to help councils across the UK deal with gum litter.
Coventry was one of more than 50 local authorities nationwide chosen to share this year’s £1.2 million pot, the fourth round of funding since the Task Force launched in 2021. The previous three rounds handed out £4.88 million between 122 councils.
The council says the cash will fund gum busting machines and cleaning work in four hotspots: Ball Hill, Jubilee Crescent, Jardine Crescent and Earlsdon High Street. New signage will also go up reminding people to bin their gum rather than drop it.
Councillor Patricia Hetherton, cabinet member for city services, said she was “delighted” the funding had been secured, pointing to the difference the city’s existing gum busting machines had already made in the city centre. She said the equipment would now be rolled out to busy local shopping centres too.
According to Keep Britain Tidy, around 77 per cent of streets and 99 per cent of retail sites across England are marked by chewing gum stains, and the annual clean-up bill for UK councils runs to roughly £7 million. The charity’s chief executive, Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, said the scheme was “already driving major improvements” in areas that had received funding, with monitoring by social enterprise Behaviour Change showing reductions in gum littering of up to 86 per cent within the first two months in some places.
It is not the first time Coventry has taken on the gum problem. Back in 2013, the council revealed it was spending £18,000 a year scraping and blasting gum off the streets, and ran a month long crackdown that included a mock “crime scene” stunt in Broadgate and warnings that litter droppers could be fined £80. Whether this latest round of funding proves more lasting than that campaign remains to be seen, but the council says residents have consistently told them cleaner streets are a priority.
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