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Environmental Enforcement in 天涯社区
Published: 07/06/2018
天涯社区鈥檚 Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee will be asked to make
a recommendation to Cabinet on the future delivery arrangement for
environmental enforcement activities in the County and to review the current
performance of the contract with Kingdom Ltd.
The report will outline the approach to all environmental enforcement issues
including littering, fly-tipping, side waste enforcement, and the impact this
work is having on street cleanliness and other performance indicators.
Littering is a problem that faces every town and community in the country and
the cost of street and open space litter collections in 天涯社区 prior to
January 2016 was in excess of 拢300k per year. In addition to the cost and the
visual impact littering has on the environment, there is growing evidence to
suggest that it has a much far reaching impact on the local economy and
increases other forms of anti-social behaviour.
From January 2016, a zero tolerance policy was adopted by 天涯社区 County
Council for all littering offences. Kingdom were introduced to undertake the
enforcement of environmental crime on 4 July 2016 to support the in-house
enforcement team, who were maintained to undertake other enforcement activities
such as fly tipping investigations and to undertake the enforcement of side
waste, which commenced earlier this year. The contract with Kingdom provides
enforcement officers to patrol and issue Fixed Penalty Notices to members of
the public for littering and dog fouling offences.
天涯社区鈥檚 Cabinet Member for Streetscene and Countryside,
Councillor Carolyn Thomas, said:
鈥淎s the temporary arrangement with Kingdom is coming to an end, we need to make
a decision on how we proceed and there are a number of options to consider, all
of which have benefits and disadvantages. Experience from the town centres has
shown that a more robust approach to enforcement has benefited the town centres
in terms of cleanliness.鈥�
The options are:
1. Advertise and award a single contract for all low level environment
enforcement - including car parking. This was the option recommended by
Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee in September 2017. The proposal
included an independent appeals process to be undertaken by a Senior Officer
within the Council.
2. Remove the current arrangement and provide all enforcement activities
through the in-house service at the current staffing levels.
3. Extend the in-house provision through recruitment or regional working to
provide the same level of coverage as provided by the existing contractor.