Drop litter and pay the penalty
Tuesday September 6, 2011
A dedicated brigade of officers patrol the streets of Hammersmith & Fulham to ensure that the borough’s streets are cleaner than ever before.
The Street Scene Enforcement (SSE) team respond to complaints made by residents and visitors and also carry out daily inspections.
And it is this zero tolerance approach to litter bugs that has led to the Keep Britain Tidy Group rating the streets on H&F the cleanest that they have ever been, with 98 per cent complying with cleanliness standards. These figures represent a ten per cent increase on last year’s findings and mean that H&F has some of the cleanest streets in London.
The SSE squad has a wide range of powers in their arsenal and are able to issue fines of £75 to enviro-criminals and in extreme cases, bring about legal proceedings.
One of the most prevalent enviro-crimes in the borough is flytipping - the illegal dumping of rubbish. During the last financial year, the team investigated a mammoth 6,727 suspected flytips , which led to 435 fines being issued and 12 prosecutions.
Whether it’s an unwanted mattress or a lorry load of rubble, fly-tipping is against the law and can, at a Crown Court, result in a penalty of up to £50,000 or imprisonment for up to five years.
Earlier this year, The Napule Restaurant on Fulham Road was ordered to pay £2,570 after the council proved that it had illegally dumped 11 large sacks of rubbish on the pavement.
In June, the El Toro Restaurant, Hammersmith Road was fined £1,215 after pleading guilty to two flytipping offences and one month later, the Suzu Japanese Tapas Bar, also on Hammersmith Road, was ordered to pay a total of £965 after being found guilty of a similar offence.
The SSE team have also been busy catching and fining almost 937 litter louts during the last financial year, with several cases pending court action.
The council will continue to proactively seek out litter louts and with highly visible proactive ‘beats’ inspecting streets and key routes checked daily, the chances are that many more people will be stopped.
The council’s Parks Constabulary have also fined 26 dog owners for fouling incidents since 2010.
Cllr Greg Smith, cabinet member for residents’ services said: “One of the reasons why the streets in Hammersmith & Fulham are cleaner than ever before is because we will not tolerate people using them like a giant rubbish bin. If you think that it is acceptable to flytip or drop litter in the borough be prepared to pay for it.
“Residents tell us time and time again how highly they value clean streets and we are delighted that the latest statistics show that the borough has never been so clean. It is very expensive to clean litter from our streets and we would like to thank the tens of thousands of residents who are helping us to save money during these tough financial times by keeping the borough litter free.”
The street scene enforcement team enforce:
- Trade waste
- Investigating fly-tips
- Litter dropping (including cigarette butts)
- Fly-posting
- Graffiti
- Dog fouling
- Highway obstructions
- Overgrown vegetation
- Abandoned articles (shopping trolleys, bicycles)
- Advertising boards
- Refuse out on the wrong day
- Recycling enforcement
- Skip licenses
You can help the council to keep the streets of the borough cleaner than ever before by calling the team on the Cleaner Greener hotline 020 8753 1100 or email cleaner.greener@lbhf.gov.uk if you suspect that a enviro-crime has been committed
If you can give the team a description of who dumped the rubbish, details of any vehicles used and a rough time that the incident took place, it could will help officers track down the culprit and take enforcement action against them.
