Agenda item - Summary of Environmental Enforcement

Agenda item

Summary of Environmental Enforcement

Minutes:

The Community Safety Manager presented the Summary of Environmental Enforcement Outcomes Monitoring Report for the period 1st April 2014 to 31st January 2015.  During the delivery of this report the following matters were raised for Members’ consideration:

 

·         The Community Safety team undertook environmental enforcement duties on behalf of Environmental Services.

·         There were six stages to the enforcement process.  The enforcement Officers could use their discretion to determine which stage in the process should be followed in a particular case.

·         Whilst there had been an increase in the number of fly tipping and fly posting cases investigated when compared to the previous year there had been a decline in the number of dog fouling cases.

·         In cases where no further action had been recorded there may have been a lack of evidence or no crime had been detected when Officers were called to the scene.

·         The Council had a statutory duty to investigate cases of abandoned vehicles.

·         In total 2 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) had been issued for fly tipping during the period and these had both been paid.

·         A further 2 FPNs had been issued for waste carrier licences which had not been paid.  One of these cases had been referred to the Council’s Legal Services team for further consideration.

 

Following the presentation of the report Members discussed a number of issues in further detail:

 

·         The extent to which written warnings would deter offenders from fly tipping in future.

·         The use of written warnings to advise residents that they should not leave bags of rubbish alongside full bins on refuse collection days.

·         The legal definition of fly tipping and the value of providing a breakdown of the types of fly tipping cases that had occurred in future reports.

·         The need for Officers to have enough evidence to justify issuing an FPN as this evidence could be used in court if the case reached that stage.

·         The potential to trace perpetrators guilty of fly posting from the contact details provided on posters.

·         The reduction in cases of dog fouling reported to the Council and the suggestion that these figures did not reflect the full scale of the problem in the district.

·         The need for witnesses to be prepared to identify a particular dog and owner when dog fouling occurred and the reluctance of many people to act as witnesses in an legal proceedings.

·         The potential for Officers in the place teams to act as official witnesses in cases of dog fouling and the likelihood that this would lead to an increase in the number of cases reported because the team operated in the community.

·         Restrictions on covert surveillance of repeat offenders.  Members suggested that the CCTV team could identify hotspots and direct the Enforcement Officers to those locations.

·         The value of displaying notices that could advise potential offenders of the fines they might be required to pay if they persistently failed to collect their dog’s faeces or left bags containing excrement in the community.

·         The potential to tackle the behaviour of drivers who threw litter onto the highways and the role of the place teams in providing a litter picking service.

·         The role of the dog warden services provided by WRS compared to the service provided by enforcement teams at other authorities..

 

RESOLVED that the report be noted.

Supporting documents: