The Standards, Zones & Your Rights

The standards this site holds the council to

Everything on this site is measured against one document: the Government's statutory Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse (Defra, England, current version March 2026). It is not our opinion — it is the standard the council and its appointed contractors are legally required to work to. Below is what it actually says.

The short version. Streets must not fall below Grade B. If they do, the council has a set maximum time — depending on the street's zone — to get it back to Grade A. Miss that, and residents have a legal route to force action.

1. The grades of cleanliness (A–D)

These are the four grades used to describe how much litter and refuse is present. The wording below is taken directly from the Code.

Grade A

No litter or refuse.

Grade B

Predominantly free of litter and refuse apart from some small items.

Grade C

Widespread distribution of litter and/or refuse with minor accumulations.

Grade D

Heavily affected by litter and/or refuse with significant accumulations.

Litter and refuse — what each grade looks like on a street

Example photographs from the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse (Defra). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. © Crown copyright.

Grade A litter example — Grade A
No litter or refuse.

Grade B litter example — Grade B
Mostly clear apart from some small items. The acceptable standard.

Grade C litter example — Grade C
Widespread litter with minor accumulations. Unacceptable.

Grade D litter example — Grade D
Heavily affected, significant accumulations. Unacceptable.

Where does the line sit? The Code is explicit: the presence of even one small item of litter or refuse downgrades an area from A to B. Grade B is treated as the acceptable standard for short periods. Grade C and Grade D are regarded as unacceptable. So a street sitting at C or D is, by the Government's own definition, below standard.

A separate A–D scale applies to detritus — the fine gritty muck: silt, dust, grit, mud and small fragments of broken-down debris that gather in gutters and along kerbs. On metalled highways, detritus must be removed to Grade A after cleansing.

What "metalled highway" means. It has nothing to do with metal. It is an old term for a properly surfaced road — tarmac or asphalt — from "road metal", the crushed stone used to build roads. In plain terms it means any normal made-up, sealed road or paved surface. The point of the rule: when the council sweeps a surfaced road, it must get the grit and dirt completely off — back to spotless (Grade A) — not just "mostly clean".

Detritus — what each grade looks like on a road

Example photographs from the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse (Defra). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. © Crown copyright.

Grade A detritus example — Grade A
No detritus.

Grade B detritus example — Grade B
Mostly free of detritus except some light scattering.

Grade C detritus example — Grade C
Widespread detritus with minor accumulations.

Grade D detritus example — Grade D
Heavily affected, significant accumulations.

“Parked cars” is not an excuse — the Code is explicit. A council cannot leave the gutter and kerb channel dirty simply because a mechanical road-sweeper cannot get past parked vehicles. Where a machine cannot reach, the Code requires the work to be done another way:

“On roads where high levels of vehicle obstruction occur most of the time, appropriate cleansing strategies must be used such as manual sweeping … for example, on roads located within areas of high-density housing.” — Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse, paragraph 9.18

The Code also tells managers to “identify times at which roads are least busy or obstructed” and to cleanse then — even if that means “working outside normal working hours” (paragraph 9.17). The Mounts is dense HMO housing with cars parked along the kerb for most of the day: it is exactly the situation the Code says must be swept by hand when the machine cannot reach the channel. A sweeper that simply drives past parked cars and leaves the detritus behind has not met the standard.

2. Zones — and why your street's zone decides everything

The Code sorts all land into four zones based on how heavily it is used. The zone sets the maximum time the council has to respond. Getting the zone right (or challenging a wrong one) is often the single most important thing for a street.

Zone	What it covers (from the Code)
High intensity of use	Areas of intense pedestrian or vehicular movement — primary and secondary retail, office and commercial areas, main roads through them, and hotspots.
Medium intensity of use	Moderate pedestrian and vehicular activity, used regularly by the public but outside retail/commercial centres — most areas of housing and suburban roads.
Low intensity of use	Low or infrequent activity, often more rural — rural roads and quiet areas.
Special circumstances	Where health, safety and practicability dominate — carriageways, verges and central reservations of motorways and trunk roads; land affected by flooding or legal restrictions.

The rule you can use. The Code says: “If in doubt, categorise a land use into the same zone as the dominant land uses around it.” A busy residential street used constantly by the public should not be quietly treated as low intensity. If it is, that directly — and wrongly — extends the time the council gives itself to act.

3. Response times — the clock the council is on

Once a street falls below Grade B, the Code sets a maximum response time to restore it to Grade A. This is Table 2 of the Code, reproduced exactly:

Zone	Maximum time to restore to Grade A
High	Half a day — by 6pm if reported before 1pm, or by 1pm the next day if reported between 1pm and 6pm the previous day.
Medium	1 day — by 6pm the following evening.
Low	14 days.
Special circumstances	28 days, or as soon as reasonably practicable.

Extra rules the Code adds: high-intensity areas that fall to an unacceptable level overnight should be back to Grade A by 8am; drug-related litter should be removed within 3 hours; and material hazardous to health should be removed at the earliest opportunity.

This is what our street clocks show. When a street here is reported, we start a countdown based on its zone and the times above. When that clock runs out and the street is still below standard, the site records the breach — with the dated evidence to back it up.

4. Your rights — the law behind this

The Code is statutory guidance issued under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. In plain terms:

The duty	Section 89 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 places a duty on councils and other “duty bodies” to keep their land, so far as is practicable, clear of litter and refuse, and to keep certain roads clean.
Contractors don't escape it	The duty is not transferable. A council can hire a cleansing contractor, but the council remains responsible if the land is not kept to standard. “We outsourced it” is not a defence.
Your enforcement route	Under Section 91, any person — a resident, a business, a landowner — can take action through the magistrates' court against a body failing this duty, and ask the court for a Litter Abatement Order.
The consequences	If a Litter Abatement Order is issued and ignored, the duty body can be guilty of an offence, fined up to £2,500, with further daily fines for each day the offence continues.

Why this site matters. A Section 91 action needs evidence: that the land was below standard, on a given date, and stayed that way beyond the allowed response time. That is exactly what a timestamped, zone-classified record is built to provide.

This page explains the standards in plain English and is not legal advice. For a formal Section 91 action, residents should seek their own advice and rely on the full text of the Code and the Act.

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