Monday August 10th 2026
Glasgow City Chambers
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Catherine Hunter
More cleansing and refuse collection vehicles are needed across Glasgow to help keep the city’s streets clean according to two prominent city figures.
Councillor Paul Carey (BEM) and GMB convenor Chris Mitchell say that fewer vehicles makes it harder for the workforce to do their job and empty bins on time.
It comes after an FOI, submitted by councillor Carey and sent exclusively to the LDR service, revealed that the number of cleansing vehicles had dropped slightly from 192 in 2021/22 to 187 in 2025/26 respectively.
The number of vehicles sat at 175, 171 and 187 during the 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial period.
The FOI also asked how many vehicles were out of commission each year, the reasons why they might be out of commission, the average length of time vehicles were out of service and the cost of repairs and maintenance for out-of-service vehicles each year but Glasgow City Council did not hold the information requested.
Speaking about the FOI councillor Paul Carey said: “It is pretty disappointing there has been a decrease, it should be an increase in vehicles.
“It is also pretty disappointing that the council doesn’t keep the data on how many times the cleansing vehicles get repaired.
“This is shocking from the biggest local authority in Scotland, that they can’t tell us how often they repair a cleansing vehicle and how long it is off the road for.
“The number of refuse or cleansing rounds affected, delayed, or cancelled due to vehicle unavailability
“That again affects hundreds of people in the city and it is incredible that we can’t get access to this information.
“We can’t scrutinise if we don’t know how much money we have.”
GMB trade union convenor Chris Mitchell agreed and stressed that there should be a contingency plan in place to keep the refuse collection system running smoothly.
Chris Mitchell said: “It looks like there has been a reduction in the fleet but we had to get rid of the old green fleet that needed to be replaced.
“The newer yellow fleet is owned by Glasgow City Council but that took between 13 and 15 years to replace them.
“We need to be in a situation like other councils in Scotland. We can’t be in a situation again where we are running the fleet into the ground.
“There should be a contingency plan in place for vehicles so that when one breaks down there is a spare vehicle sitting there right away owned by the council that can help keep the refuse collection going and get people’s bins emptied.
“The life expectancy of a vehicle should be five years, not 13 years, before we look at getting different vehicles again.
“The council should be in a situation where they own their vehicles as it costs more to run and maintain them through a private company.”
A spokesman for the council said: “Our frontline services have been the subject of various reforms over the years that allow these services run more efficiently.
“The number of vehicles in use is appropriate for how our frontline services are currently operated.
“Our fleet is well managed and record keeping is up to date. We are taking steps to digitise our fleet management data which will improve ease of reporting of statistics.”
Tweet Share on Facebook
