Andy Murray, Venus and Serena Williams, Tim Henman, and now Arthur Fery – all these names will be remembered as Wimbledon heroes, but there are a few unsung Wimbledon heroes that you may not have come across before.

Putting on a prestigious international event like this takes millions of hours of effort from thousands upon thousands of people – not least the hard-working folk at the All England Lawn Tennis Club. But lots of these people are Merton Council employees whose work ramps up both in the fortnight itself and in the weeks and months leading up to it. Here’s a little flavour of what we get up to.

Street cleaning

Our street cleaners are up bright and early to keep the borough looking its best. Whilst we try to encourage everyone to dispose of rubbish responsibly, they huge increase in footfall inevitably means more litter, so we massively step up our litter picking operation to keep up with the tonnes of waste that would otherwise bury our streets. Here’s our colleague Andy to tell us more:

Food safety

The food safety team in our Regulatory Services Partnership support the Championships to ensure the hundreds of thousands of drinks and meals are sourced, stored and prepared safely. It’s lots more than just strawberries and cream, from checking the temperature of cooked food, to sending ice to laboratories to check for contamination, to monitoring staff to make sure they’re following procedures correctly, a lot of work goes into keeping risk to a minimum. So, if you’re ever lucky enough to get to the courts in SW19, whether you’re fuelling up on chips, sushi, tea or Pimm’s, you’ll know you can do so safely.

Big screens

Our events team work hard for months to get everything in place for you to be able to watch the action unfold on our big screens. You may think it’s just a case of wheeling it up and plugging it in, but you’d be wrong – the team have to liaise with police to keep the events safe, make sure all the content broadcasting is arranged with AELTC, make plans for waste management (and toilets!), and get all the necessary health and safety checks signed off. Here’s our colleague Daz to tell you more:

Parking

With over 500,000 visitors to Wimbledon – the vast majority of whom are from further afield – it’s no surprise that we see a big increase in the number of cars on our roads. Our parking team makes sure that key roads and routes are kept clear for all of our safety. This year they had to remove seven cars from designated emergency routes to ensure access for emergency services. They also made sure parking on our residential roads was kept for the people that lived there by clearing Uber and limousine drivers waiting for customers. On the second day of the tournament, they also kept our public transport network moving by relocating a vehicle that was blocking a bus route.

The rest

That’s just a taste of what we get up to in the Wimbledon fortnight – from our parks team who help to facilitate the famous queue, to our trading standards team, our highways team, community safety team and so many more – it really does take a borough to make sure the world’s favourite tennis tournament can happen.