To receive questions in accordance with the provisions of Council Procedure Rules 12.2 and 12.4 which require a Member to give at least 3 working days’ notice, in writing, of the question to the Chief Executive.
Minutes:
Councillor Whitaker had submitted three questions for Councillor Brookes, portfolio holder for Environmental Services, regarding fly tipping. The first question was:
What standard of service can our residents expect in relation to the management of fly tipping and litter in accordance with The Environmental Protection Act?
Councillor Brookes replied:
The Environmental Protection Act 1990 imposes duties in Part 1 and Part 2 on certain landowners and occupiers to keep specified land clear of litter and refuse and the local authority and Secretary of State to keep clean public highways for which they are responsible. Part 1 contains a Code of Practice issued under Section 89, Part 7 of the Act. It seeks to encourage duty bodies to maintain their land within acceptable cleanliness standards. The emphasis is on the appropriate and consistent management of an area to keep it clean not on how often it is cleaned. The principle of the Code of Practice is practicability. The Council’s street cleansing operations are designed to take account of the guidance contained in the Code of Practice in practical terms. This means that areas that are likely to generate more waste and litter, eg, town centres, densely populated areas, visitor areas, etc, will have more cleansing staff allocated to them. Harbour Ward, as an example, has areas near shops and the promenade that are machine swept every day and also has frequent litter picking and machine sweeping of residential areas. Morecambe as a whole has a response team allocated to it to remove fly tipping every day and there is a similar response team operating in Lancaster.
Councillor Whitaker asked for his thanks to staff involved in cleansing to be recorded, as he recognised that they had a very challenging job. He then asked a supplementary question:
Has there been research and evaluation in regard to best practice in management of fly tipping and littering? And what guidance is the Government offering for us to address this issue as an authority?
Councillor Brookes replied:
There is a Public Realm Development Officer busy researching ways of improving the response to fly-tipping in the district.
Councillor Whitaker’s second and third questions were asked together:
How many Fly Tipping incidents have been recorded within The West End of Morecambe since January 2021?
What have they cost to clear up?
Councillor Brookes responded:
In the nine months to October 2022 there have been 123 reported cases in Harbour Ward. For further context there were 438 reported cases in Harbour Ward in the last financial year from April 2020 to March 2021. So we are now seeing a significant decline in numbers since the highs of lockdown. In 2019/20 across the whole district 1942 instances of fly tipping were recorded. 1,113 were back alley incidents. Of these, further action was taken in 961 cases, which means it is not just cleared, something else happens, and further investigation was carried out in 594 cases. 200 warning letters were subsequently issues, 159 statutory notices were issued, which is action which precedes prosecution, 8 cases resulted in fines in court of up to £1,000.
Number of fly tipping incidents recoded in the district in the past few years are 3,717 in 2014/15; 2,750 in 2015/16; 3,765 in 2016/17; 4,006 in 2017/18; 2,708 in 2018/19 and 1,942 in 2019/20. Obviously during the pandemic, it has spiked back up. So the point being, although we know there were significant increases during the pandemic, before the exceptional circumstances of lockdown there had been a significant downward trend.
On costs, it is not practical to work out cost per incident, but the annual cost of the Morecambe fly tipping response team is in the area of £70k per annum, plus some additional disposal costs for large items, such as fridges. There are also indirect costs associated with fly tipping including the customer services centre, enforcement team and legal. While it is unlikely we would reduce staffing levels if fly tipping disappeared overnight, officers in theses areas have plenty of other things they could concentrate on to benefit the district.