The council is steam-cleaning old chewing gum off city centre pavements

The Labour-run council has added a high-pressure, high-temperature steam cleaner to its overnight street cleaning in Brighton city centre, to get rid of hardened chewing gum that jet-washing couldn’t shift. Keep Britain Tidy gave extra funding for it. The Argus¹ first reported the story.

The machine softens the gum with heat and pressure so it comes away. Gum had held out against jet-washing and a deep clean known as “hubbing”.

Councillor Tim Rowkins, the council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, said the overnight cleans had left the “black blobs of years-old gum” standing out “even more on an otherwise clean pavement”. He said: “We couldn’t leave it like that, so we secured the additional funding to help our team to get rid of it.”

Cabinet approved the overnight service in March, with a £250k yearly budget, to start from May. Its crews work from 9pm to 5am in the busiest parts of the city centre, jet-washing, removing graffiti and repainting street furniture. The city centre manager, a post the council created last year, oversees it.

Before the clean, the council put up signs in the city centre asking people to put their gum in a bin. “There are plenty of bins around the city so, if you’re a keen chewer, please use them,” Rowkins said.