Worksop Guardian 12.07.2023
Environmental crimes like littering and fly-tipping are selfish and opportunistic – damaging wildlife habitats, creating eyesores and ruining our enjoyment of the great outdoors. It’s right that criminals who spoil things for the rest of us are punished appropriately, and I am grateful for the hard work of councils in this endeavour.
The Prime Minister’s Antisocial Behaviour Action Plan, launched in March, set out how we will help councils to take tougher action against those who harm our public spaces. We committed to raising the upper limits for fixed penalty notices for various offences this year, allowing councils greater freedom to set the rates that offenders should pay. From 31 July 2023, the upper limit of fixed penalty notices for littering, graffiti and fly-posting offences will increase from £150 to £500; for household waste duty of care offences from £400 to £600; and for fly-tipping offences from £400 to £1,000.
Taking proportionate and effective enforcement action against people who intentionally or carelessly damage their local environment is a practical step authorities can take to change behaviour and deter others from offending, and we want to see councils making the most of these new levels. However, we do not want to see these new Fixed Penalty Notice levels exploited for profit.
We remain clear that Fixed Penalty Notices should never be used to raise revenue, target accidental littering or punish those who are trying to do the right thing when education would be the better approach. This is set out in our guidance on effective enforcement for littering which we have committed to putting on a firm statutory footing, giving those to which it applies a clear and explicit duty to have regard to it when exercising their enforcement functions.
This is just the first step under the action plan. We’re also consulting on ringfencing the money raised from these fines for enforcement and clean up activity; increasing public scrutiny on the use of by publishing new fly-tipping league tables to show which local authorities are taking a muscular approach; conducting research into effective enforcement practices, and we’ve committed to placing our enforcement guidance on a firm statutory footing.
We’ve also provided £1.2 million in grants across more than 30 local authorities for innovative projects cracking down on fly-tipping – giving councils more resources to keep taking the fight to waste criminals.
