The Ballito Urban Improvement Precinct (UIP) green thumbs and brooms have been hard at work beautifying and improving the town over the past two years and are now gearing up for the festive season.
Sidewalk paving up Stewart Drive, on Douglas Crowe and along Albertina Way as well as the installation of bollards in Kirsty Close and most areas around the business park, creating verges at Tiger Wheel and Tyre and Platinum Park and general clean ups have been some of the missions completed by the UIP in the last six months.
Head of UrbanPlaces Cara Reilly said thanks to their year round maintaining, cleaning and greening to create upmarket public spaces, there is no need for a cleaning blitz before the festive season.
“Some of our biggest achievements this year was the work done around the business park and the stronger relationship with KDM leading to their increased service delivery to the area. The installation of the dog poo bag dispensers along the promenade have also been great.”
The UIP is also a member of the Festival Management Committee (FESMAC) – a municipal driven operational committee tasked with improving service delivery.
“FESMAC meets weekly during the festive season with the aim to: resolve operational challenges; improve integration of municipal departments to optimize efficiency and effectiveness; integrate municipal and privately funded supplementary services and report mechanisms for service delivery requests – particularly those that requiring multi department coordination,” said Reilly.
A big focus for the festive season is the boost in security which started with the installation of additional lighting on the promenade.
The UIP will also help beef up security services over the festive season and during the matric Rage week.
“The UIP’s 24/7 control room number is posted as the initial go-to response number: 086 111 1588. The UIP will be funding dedicated SAPS members in Ballito who will be divided between Hawkins car park and the tidal pool on weekends between 12pm and 6pm. In addition to this, the matric week event companies have paid for two special events security officers provided by Enforce. This is supported by the regular staff contingent of 24 hour security deployment in the precinct, the permanent patrol vehicle, security officers integrated on one radio frequency and five officers on day shift (6am to 6pm) and eight on night shift (6pm to 6am).”
She said the visible improvements and before and after photos on social media has been met with a positive response from the community.
“The voluntary residential contribution is starting to increase as has the commercial interest from property owners outside the UIP boundary. We will always need to do more and show greater delivery but this is the nature of urban management.”
According to Reilly, some of the exciting plans coming up next year will be KDM’s approval of the UIP funded 1,2m Clearview Fence on the centre meridian of the P445, replacing storm water drains in the business park and improvement to the beachfront walkway.
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