After the case of a man fined £500 for fly tipping when an envelope blew out of his bin, a similar thing has happened to a lady in Enfield. This case is even worse, however, since the council seems to be partly at fault for the incident.
The lady’s bin had been broken – along with her neighbours’ bins – when a car crashed into the front garden in December, and the council failed to replace the bins for several months. In April, a letter that she had placed in her bin was found on the ground by enforcement agents, and she was issued with a £500 fine for littering.
As expected, the fine was issued by a private company (LA Support), which is employed by the council on a commission basis (they are paid per fine).
Below are photos of the damage to the bins.
Here is a testimony from the lady:
After the car crashed into the wall, there was a mess in front of the house for a long time because no one knew who was responsible for cleaning it up. The council didn’t replace the bins for several months. The neighbour upstairs still sometimes uses my blue bin because they haven’t received a new one.
In early April, I put my rubbish in the bins. One of these items was a letter. Then I went away for three weeks to Poland. When I came home, I found a letter from LA Support that said I had been fined £500; I had missed the deadline for the reduced rate of £250. The letter that I had put in the bin had been found on the ground; the most likely explanation is that it blew out, or came out when someone else was putting their rubbish in my bin. The letter was surrounded by other black bags, which are not mine; I have no idea whose rubbish this is.
As soon as I received the FPN, I sent the enclosed envelope with questions for the officer, and also sent an email, and explained my delayed reply. I only received an automatic response saying that someone would contact me. To this day no one has contacted me. I have lived at this address for 12 years and have never known anything like this. I have only received a letter saying that I must pay or I will be prosecuted.
It seems to me that companies cooperating with the council want to earn as much as possible on the commission and impose unfair penalties.
The picture above (taken by LA Support) suggests that waste management in the area is a general problem, in part because of the council’s failure to replace all of the broken bins.
Then, to make matters worse, the council contracts a private company on commission to fine its residents. Residents are issued fines for littering, when all they did was put their rubbish out the best they could.
This penalty clearly doesn’t fit the requirements for a littering offence:
A person is guilty of an offence if he throws down, drops or otherwise deposits any litter in any place to which this section applies and leaves it.
But the lady did not ‘deposit’ the litter on the ground; she deposited it in the bin. The wind or some other force deposited it on the ground, at a time when she herself was on her way to Poland.
Furthermore, Defra guidance states that penalties should not be issued
If a littering offence is accidental – for example if something falls from someone’s pocket. In order to maintain public trust in the legitimacy of enforcement action against littering, enforcement action should only be taken where there is evidence of an intent to drop and leave litter.
If you should not be penalised if the litter falls out of your pocket, you should certainly not be penalised if it falls out of your bin when you were not there.
With the large increase in litter fines (from £100 to £500), this makes it increasingly attractive for private companies on commission to issue these fines wherever possible. As a result, they ignore the obvious context for litter (such as broken or missing bins), and refuse to consider people’s submissions or appeals for these unfair fines.
We urge Enfield Council to review this case in particular, and to reconsider its contract with the private company. It is tremendously unjust that residents are being punished for council failures.