Agenda item

To receive an address and a question from Mr George Smith in accordance with Council’s Constitution. The address and question are set out in the agenda papers.

Mr George Smith spoke to Council about fly-tipping. A copy of his speech had been circulated with the agenda.

After making his speech, Mr Smith asked Councillor Brendan Hughes, the Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Clean and Green:

“Can the City Council tell me how many mobile CCTV cameras, which are capable of providing satisfactory evidence to prosecute offenders, does the Council have use of?”

Mr Smith also asked his supplementary question, to allow Councillor Hughes to respond to both:

“How many fly-tip offenders has Lancaster City Council successfully prosecuted in the last ten years?”

Councillor Hughes thanked Mr Smith for his speech and questions and replied that the Council did not have mobile CCTV cameras for the purpose described, however that might be something to consider for the future. 

With regard to prosecutions, Councillor Hughes explained that the Council only kept files for six years and between 2012-16 there had been three prosecutions there had been three prosecutions, one in January and two very recently, only two days before the Council meeting. However, he felt that this fact did not tell the full story. During 2012-16 the Council’s two person waste enforcement team attended 3,524 reported incidents of environmental crime, issued 2,302 warning letters, 898 statutory notices, 134 Fixed Penalty Notices and successfully obtained 13 prosecutions for littering. The Council also dealt with 575 reports of abandoned vehicles.

There were also a number of points that Councillor Hughes felt would be helpful to explain:

·         It was the landowner’s responsibility to deal with fly-tipping. Councils were only responsible for dealing with fly-tipping on public land.

·         Nether Kellet’s 12-fly tips per year didn’t state whether they happened on public or private land. At maximum they accounted for 0.43% of fly-tips in the District. Councillor Hughes was aware of one lane that was sometimes subject to fly-tipping but that was not public land. A potential solution the Council put to the Parish Council several months ago was to install a gate, which the farmer could lock and unlock. The Council had not received a response to this suggestion from the Parish Council yet, although it remained committed to working with Parish Councillors in any way to alleviate the problem of fly-tipping.

·         Following the Overview and Scrutiny report in 2007, the Council developed a strategy to improve the cleanliness of the District, recognising that fly-tipping and littering were symptoms and that tackling the causes would be most effective. This focussed on three strands: service delivery; education and enforcement. This strategy was now embedded into the Council’s work practices.

·         The Council took the cleanliness of the District very seriously and spent over 50%  of its budget on services that directly contributed to the management and maintenance of the public realm

Councillor Hughes went on to add that he believed the Council was proactive on fly-tipping, but clearly people wanted more. He was happy to do something further but needed support from communities. He asked that a list of the top ten fly-tipping hotspots be compiled so that he could then ask officers to look at how the problem could be reduced in each area by working with Councillors and local communities to devise joint solutions. He asked Councillors to nominate hotspots to him, so that he could task Environmental Services with drawing up a list. Over the course of the next 12 months he planned to meet on site with ward Councillors and interested parties and develop a plan for each site, within existing resources. Obviously that would not make the problem go away but Councillor Hughes hoped that by involving communities in this way, in addition to the ongoing work, he could at least be confident that the Council was doing its very best.

The Mayor thanked Mr Smith for making his speech to the Council.