South Lakes council officers have been given the power to issue fixed penalty notices in a bid to clamp down on environmental crime.
The measure – coming via a change to the council’s constitution – was approved by a full meeting of South Lakeland District Council.
A pre-meeting report authored by Sue Warner, locality team leader at SLDC, said 447 reports of fly-tipping and 157 reports of dog fouling were among those received by the council in the past year.
She said fixed penalty notices, which are financial penalties, removed the need to take cases through the court. This, she said, could be costly and time-consuming for the council’s legal team.
“The council’s constitution [currently] does not delegate authority to officers to serve fixed penalty notices under the relevant legislation, which effectively does not allow the council to deal with environmental crime through the range of potential enforcement powers available to it or make existing legislative provisions easier to implement,” she said.
Ms Warner stressed that fixed penalty notices were a last resort and said the income generated by them would be used to fund investment to prevent the increase of environmental crime, such as investment in CCTV, body cams and printed literature.
Among the fixed penalty notices that can be served are fines of up to £150 for littering, with non-payment resulting in a maximum fine of £2,500.
At last week’s council meeting, Ms Warner was asked by Cllr Tom Harvey how many reports of environmental crime would result in fixed penalty notices being issued.
Ms Warner used fly-tipping as an example and said issuing notices ‘relies heavily’ on witness statements that were ‘very difficult’ to obtain.
“It is a handful that result in fixed penalty notices being issued,” she said. “I wouldn’t even say 10 per cent, maybe even five per cent. It is a small number.”
Cllr Eamonn Hennessy, customer and locality services portfolio holder at SLDC, said the change to the constitution would bring SLDC in line with colleagues in Barrow and Eden.
