Services for Communities department

We all want Edinburgh to be a great place to live, work, visit, study and invest.  Services for Communities (SfC) plays a key role in this by providing services that help the city stay:

• Clean
• Green
• Safe
• Well-housed
• Beautiful and well-maintained
• Moving efficiently
• well-informed and well-engaged

Many of these services are delivered through neighbourhood teams in response to the needs of their local residents. Since this way of working was introduced in 2006 there have been dramatic improvements in performance and customer satisfaction.

What you can do:

Report a problem with a local road or pavement

Find a home and get housing advice

Get information on recycling

Access help with anti-social behaviour

Get information about your local parks and open spaces

Get consumer advice from trading standards

Find out when your refuse will be collected

Get information about special uplifts

Report an environmental problem in your neighbourhood

See the facilities at your local library

You might also be interested in:

• The work we do to prevent crime and keep communities safe
• Our role in food safety, and other health and safety issues

Facts and figures

The department has a budget of over £500m and more than 5,000 staff. Its responsibilities include:

• handling over 260,000 tonnes of waste each year
• maintaining and cleaning around 1,400 kilometres of roads
• maintaining over 60,000 streetlights
• managing 20,000 council homes
• helping over 4,000 households who are homeless each year
• managing 141 parks, 1200 allotments, 150 play areas and 160,000 hectares of open space
• providing a wide range of services through 26 libraries and five mobile libraries including lending three million books to 100,000 borrowers
• ensuring food hygiene and general health and safety at restaurants, pubs, petrol stations and many other service outlets
• undertaking 3,500 cremations and burials each year and nearly 1,000 autopsies at our mortuary.