Scotland’s dirtiest council areas have been revealed with the capital being the worst in the country for litter-strewn streets, according to a new study.

Independent watchdogs found that many cash-strapped local authorities are struggling to cope with what experts have called a “looming litter emergency” which is “hidden in plain sight”.

Inspectors working for Keep Scotland Beautiful or KSB found nearly 18% of streets and public spaces in the capital were “unacceptable” in 2021-22.

Edinburgh was followed, at some distance in the independent nationwide audit, by North Lanarkshire, Inverclyde and Glasgow, with scores of 15.5%, 15% and 14% respectively.

These numbers compare with what KSB sees as a worryingly high Scottish average of 10% - and figures of around 11% in both Aberdeen and Dundee.

The audit was carried out before cleansing strikes in Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland in the summer.

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Officials in the capital believe they have not had enough resources to cope with littering, not least by tourists.

Labour’s Scott Arthur took charge of cleansing after this year’s council elections.

He said: “When I inherited the Transport and Environment Convenorship in May 2022, officers confirmed to me that street-cleansing in Edinburgh was underfunded.

“Since then the service has been reviewed and we have a clear plan to take it forward. The ongoing financial pressures councils face do not make resolving the issue easy, but I am keen to work cross-party to ensure this service has the funding needed to halt Edinburgh’s decline.”

KSB does thousands of spot-checks across Scotland for its Local Environmental Audit and Management System or LEAMS.

Its purposes is not to name and shame councils which do badly - but to collect intelligence on the state of our public spaces.

The nationwide picture has been getting worse in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008.

Scotland has more littering, flytipping and dog-fouling  than at any time in the last decade. Only in in five spots checked were litter-free.


The pandemic had different effects on services in different parts of the country.

Some neighbourhoods saw massive reductions in footfall, and resulting mess. Others - such as urban parks - were put under intense pressure.

Big cities across Europe reported high levels of absences in their cleansing teams- and were forced to prioritise domestic collections over, say, weeding.

Mr Arthur acknowledged Edinburgh’s LEAMS score was “disappointing”.

However, he added: “It has been widely documented that the primary reason for this has been pressure from significantly reduced staff availability and the resulting requirement to prioritise particular waste collection activities.

“Due to Edinburgh’s status as capital city and a centre of tourism this also inevitably adds to pressures on waste and cleansing services.”

The council administration last month produced a report highlighting “the improvements to be made within the current budget”. But Mr Arthur said the document also listed “improvements that could be made to the service, and the budgetary requirements to make those improvements”.

He concluded: “The purpose of this review is to seek to move towards a more proactive model, particularly in residential areas. Increased focus on residential areas will have a positive impact upon the Council’s LEAMS score and this is the principal focus of the review.”

KSB’s regional breakdown of litter levels across the country reveals the trend is not always negative. Scores got worse in 20 of the 31 local authorities covered.

But better in 11, including Edinburgh. The capital ranked lowest despite actually improving its headline LEAMS figure between 2020-21 and 2021-22, albeit by less than half a percentage point.

Edinburgh - which as recently as 2019-20 performed above average - slumped to bottom place partly because the council with the worst result in 2020-21, Falkirk, showed a big improvement.

The share of Falkirk public spaces deemed to be unacceptably littered fell from nearly 19% to just over 12%.

The council’s five-year “Take Pride in Falkirk” anti-littering strategy earlier this year made the finals of a prestigious local government awards scheme.

Publicity campaigns - which tend to face the brunt of cutbacks - can have direct impact on littering levels. Councils have statutory duties to collect rubbish - and cleansing budgets can be protected. They are not legally obliged to pay for PR.

A spokeswoman for Falkirk said: “There is an increasing community momentum surrounding our education and engagement programmes which both inform, advise and engage with all of our key stakeholders combined with the efforts of our street cleansing team in keeping communities clean.

“Community groups, individuals and schools are all making a fantastic effort to help keep our area clean and free from litter with regular clean ups which we support.”

The council area with the best score on litter was Aberdeenshire. KSB inspectors found fewer than 2% of checked spots were unacceptable. The figure for Angus was nearly as good, at 3%.

Rural areas tend to do better than urban ones, especially poor ones. 

However, only 6% of inspected sites in West Dunbartonshire, one of Scotland’s most deprived local authorities, were unacceptable. That was a better than Argyll and Bute; Perth and Kinross; Dumfries and Galloway; and Highland, all of which scored above average.

KSB - rather than produce a national league table - benchmarks local authorities against councils with similar challenges. 

So Edinburgh, as an example, is not compared directly with Aberdeenshire. Experts think that would be unfair.

Brian Rae, KSB’s Survey and Data Coordinator, said, “For the past two decades we have supported local authorities carrying out audits across Scotland to assess the quality of our local environment.  We believe it is important to consistently measure the presence of litter, dog fouling, graffiti and flytipping across our country so that those tasked with dealing with the issues are able to prioritise cleansing resources and inform their policies and campaigns.

“We report on the findings in local authority groupings, based on population size and distribution.  This enables staff from similar local authorities to discuss the data and assist decision making to help improve standards in their areas by sharing good practice.

“We know that each local authority, indeed community, in Scotland faces a different set of challenges and circumstances and so believe it is not in the spirit of benchmarking to pit one against another in a league table using just a single indicator without context.  The narrative behind the data for one area of Scotland will be influenced by many factors.”

KSB, in its report, stressed that drilling down deeper in to local figures showed a clear link between litter and poverty. It said: “When looking at the 20% most deprived areas 32.7% have unacceptable litter levels compared with 4.6% in the 20% least deprived.

“This gap is widening and is most keenly felt in urban local authorities which also suffer the highest frequency of unacceptable litter levels. Over 40% of sites in the most deprived areas in urban local authority areas have significant or severe litter.”

There are specific long-standing concerns about litter in Edinburgh, especially close to its  main visitor attractions. James Garry, deputy director of the Cockburn Association, echoed calls for more resources and bins. But he added: “There is also an element of personality responsibility here. Why do people just throw away their paper coffee cups?”