Local Environmental Audit and Management System (LEAMS)

We administer a national monitoring programme looking at litter and other local environmental quality indicators on streets and roads across Scotland. The approach we use is called Local Environmental Audit and Management System (or LEAMS).

The programme is in partnership with local authorities whereby audits are carried out at a random selection of sites across Scotland each year collecting data on litter levels, litter types, sources of litter, the servicing of public bins, weeds, detritus, graffiti, vandalism, gum staining and more.

Knowledge and evidence showing what types of litter are affecting what locations can ensure best practice and efficiencies in cleansing operations. It also informs policies and practices to prevent litter in the first place – something we can all help with to reduce the many negative impacts poor local environmental quality has.

LEAMS also supports the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse (Scotland) 2018 which require local authorities and others to keep specified land and public roads clean and litter-free. It is also technical data feeding into developing good data on litter under the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy.

During the 2025/2026 financial year, 90 audits took place. In total, 12,053 individual sites were assessed for litter and local environmental quality. The audits were spread out evenly over three reporting periods in the year.

This year's LEAMS data shows an increase in the proportion of sites either free from litter or predominantly free from litter (92.2%) compared to last year (91.7%). This follows a year where this national litter indicator declined and has now reached the same percentage as it was in 2019-20, before the pandemic, which was the worst result at that time.

This year’s LEAMS audit highlights the following trends:

• After five years of the street cleanliness score being lower than the pre-pandemic score, it is now the same as it was in 2019-20.
• The majority of sites recorded litter, although litter free sites have increased compared to last year.
• There is a strong correlation between litter and deprivation using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation with poorer standards found in areas with higher levels of deprivation.
• In street scenes, high density residential areas have the highest proportion of streets with significant litter.
• High volumes of vehicular activity create the most challenging roadside areas to maintain.
• The average number of items counted per sites has declined again.
• Smoking related items are the most common litter type observed, both in frequency of sites affected (over half) and proportion of individual items counted.
• Food and drink packaging litter is common, making up over a quarter of litter counted.
• The majority of road channels were found to be either free or presenting only a minor presence of detritus, although almost 1 in 10 had a significant presence.
• Almost a third of sites are affected by gum staining – an increasing proportion compared to last year, nearing two thirds of sites affected in town centres.

LEAMS uses a standard approach to record litter. Five grades are used to assess the overall presence of litter at an audited site:

The street cleanliness score is the percentage of sites considered graded A, B+ or B.

Since last year, the national street cleanliness score has inclined by 0.5% and now sits at 92.2% of sites having acceptable levels of litter. This is reported to the Local Government Benchmarking Framework.

This improvement follows a decline last year but is the third annual improvement in the last four years. The score matches that of 2019-22 - before the pandemic.

19 local authorities saw an improvement in their street cleanliness score since last year. Across local authorities there is a wide range of scores nationally and between benchmarked clubs – grouping local authorities of similar characteristics. When benchmarking across local authorities, we must consider the many reasons for differences in scores and the context. There are differences in levels of deprivation in each authority area, with a skew to more deprived areas found in urban areas. Further, the budgets and severity in decline of resources will be different across Scotland. The clubs are therefore used to mitigate against the wider difference and help local authorities benchmark with similar areas.