Edinburgh emerges as Scotland's cleanest city, beating Glasgow by 10 points
‘When it comes to city cleanliness, we're streets ahead of our nearest city’ - Cllr Stephen Jenkinson
Edinburgh has been rated Scotland's cleanest city, 10 points ahead of Glasgow, in the latest annual survey of local authorities.
The Capital's standard of street cleanliness saw a marked improvement over the past five years, as measured by the Local Environmental Audit and Management System (LEAMS), the statutory performance indicator for street cleaning.
Transport and environment convener Stephen Jenkinson said: "In 2021/22 our score was 82.2 per cent in 2025/26 it's now 92.8 per cent - a significant improvement.
"Out of the other city local authorities we are recorded with the highest score in Scotland, which is really pleasing.
"These latest scores put us 10 per cent ahead of Glasgow - Glasgow is sitting on 82.3 per cent and we're sitting on 92.8 per cent. So when it comes to city cleanliness, we're streets ahead of our nearest city."
Edinburgh's high score represents a major turnaround. In 2021, Glasgow faced heavy criticism in the media over the state of its streets, but the LEAMS figures revealed Edinburgh was officially dirtier than supposedly ‘filthy’ Glasgow. While 82.5 per cent of Glasgow’s streets were considered ‘clean’, only 81.2 per cent met that standard in Edinburgh.
And just last year, figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives under Freedom of Information showed Edinburgh council had received more than 359,000 complaints over the previous five years about the city's cleanliness, from overflowing bins and flytipping to graffiti and dog fouling - although Glasgow was even worse, with 432,339 complaints.
Speaking ahead of next week’s transport and environment committee, Cllr Jenkinson said cleansing figures were now good across the city. "Our response rates remain comfortably above the 85 per cent target, the city-wide performance is in the mid to high 90 per cent range, peaking at 98 per cent during spring 2025."
And he said Edinburgh's new Visitor Levy - which comes into force next month - provided an additional income stream which would allow the council to invest in new and improved services.
"We'll be putting even more resources into waste and cleansing and that will continue year on year.
"We're investing over £100,000 in upgrading and replacing our bins in the street in high footfall areas, predominantly the city centre.
"We will also invest £500,000 a year to help private businesses deal with graffiti and £1.3m on additional services for the city centre, which will include things like waste and cleansing patrols and ensuring our streets are kept as clean as we possibly can."
He also highlighted the “Pride in our City” initiative - which sees council teams target wards for a month at a time for a deep clean, saying work had been carried out in more than 1,400 streets in the past year.
“In that time, those teams have collected in over 500 tone of debris, like flytipping and litter, manually removed a lot of weeds as well and actioned hundreds of enquiries from customers. That scheme is one we’re going to continue and seems to be very well received by citizens.”
Cllr Jenkinson said the council’s garden waste collection service had seen a steady uptake. “Over the last four years, we’ve had an increase of just over 5 per cent and there are now over 4,500 permits a year.”
And he said the council had uplifted 14,479 items which had been flytipped in the streets in housing estates across the city.
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