Issue - meetings

Fly-tipping and fly-posting cause significant environmental issues and adversely impact the street scene in the BCP Council area.  Both have increased in past years, replicating the national picture.

Investigations of incidents in legacy authorities were limited due to resource constraints, with penalties for offenders of fly-tipping and fly-posting few in number. Regulatory Services are seeking to adopt a consistent and robust approach to tackling offenders, whilst minimising additional resource requirements.

The Council has powers under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to deal with incidents of fly-tipping and littering.  Householders also have a duty of care to ensure their waste is collected by a reputable company with the relevant waste transfer permissions.  Businesses also have a duty to ensure sufficient measures are in place to manage their commercial waste. 

Fly-posting, the displaying of promotional materials or adverts without permission on public furniture, is enforced through the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003.

A private company with 10 years of experience in the Environmental Crime Industry and working with numerous Local Authorities have outlined their ability to investigate and enforce the above on behalf of BCP Council. 

RESOLVED that: -

(a)           Cabinet approves the commencement of a 12-month pilot scheme to deploy a suitable qualified contractor to undertake investigations and prosecutions of fly-tipping and fly-posting incidents;

(b)           Cabinet agrees to receive a further report following 6 months of this pilot, which will include recommendations for the future of this service; and

(c)           Cabinet approves the levels of fines for relevant offences as per paragraph 10.

Voting: Unanimous

Portfolio Holder: Community Safety

Reason

The responsibility for enforcing against enviro-crime issues such as those in scope for this pilot were carried out by different departments in legacy BCP authorities with limited resources. Poole and Christchurch issued fines for a minimal number of incidents; however no prosecutions were undertaken from 2017 to 2019 according to returns submitted to National Government.

Since Local Government Re-organisation, officers within Regulatory Services have only been able to carry out limited investigations due to lack of available resources and the need to prioritise other statutory demands. This proposal will allow the Council to access additional resource and should facilitate a more consistent, robust and thorough response to all relevant incidents.

The cost of the proposed pilot is to be paid for by the Council out of fines received and will therefore be undertaken at no additional cost to the Council.

If the pilot is approved by Cabinet, the company will be ready to start in July 2021 providing the contract can be signed off within that time.

The Portfolio Holder for Community Safety presented a report, a copy of which had been circulated to each Member and a copy of which appears as Appendix 'C' to these Minutes in the Minute Book.

Cabinet was informed that fly-tipping and fly-posting cause significant environmental issues and adversely impact the street scene in the BCP Council area.  Both have increased in past years, replicating the national picture.

Further to this Cabinet was advised that investigations of incidents in legacy authorities were limited due to resource constraints, with penalties for offenders of fly-tipping and fly-posting few in number.

In addition Cabinet was informed that Regulatory Services are seeking to adopt a consistent and robust approach to tackling offenders, whilst minimising additional resource requirements, and that the Council has powers under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to deal with incidents of fly-tipping and littering, householders also have a duty of care to ensure their waste is collected by a reputable company with the relevant waste transfer permissions, and businesses have a duty to ensure sufficient measures are in place to manage their commercial waste. 

Cabinet was further informed that fly-posting, the displaying of promotional materials or adverts without permission on public furniture, is enforced through the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003.

The Portfolio Holder advised that a private company with 10 years of experience in the Environmental Crime Industry and working with numerous Local Authorities have outlined their ability to investigate and enforce the above on behalf of BCP Council. 

The Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Board addressed the Cabinet advising that at their recent meeting the Board resolved to make the following recommendation to Cabinet in respect of this item.

The Overview and Scrutiny Board recommend that Cabinet reconsider this decision, and not proceed with the contract at this time in order to take time to look at what other options are available.

In relation to this the Portfolio Holder thanked the Overview and Scrutiny Board for their recommendation and in relation to this advised that there is an option to terminate the contract with 30 days’ notice and stressed that this was a pilot which would be reviewed which therefore presented little risk to the Council.

RESOLVED that: -

(a)           Cabinet approves the commencement of a 12-month pilot scheme to deploy a suitable qualified contractor to undertake investigations and prosecutions of fly-tipping and fly-posting incidents;

(b)           Cabinet agrees to receive a further report following 6 months of this pilot, which will include recommendations for the future of this service; and

(c)           Cabinet approves the levels of fines for relevant offences as per paragraph 10.

Voting: Unanimous

Portfolio Holder: Community Safety

To consider the Fly-tipping and Fly-posting Enforcement Pilot Cabinet Report scheduled for Cabinet consideration on 26 May 2021 as an urgent item with the agreement of the Chairman.

The O&S Board is asked to scrutinise the reports and make recommendations to Cabinet as appropriate.

Cabinet members invited to attend for this item: Councillor May Haines, Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Councillor Mark Anderson, Portfolio Holder for Environment, Cleansing and Waste.

The Cabinet report for this item is included with the supplementary agenda for consideration by the Overview and Scrutiny Board.

The Chairman introduced the item and explained that he was varying the order of the agenda to take this item next. The Chairman explained that this was being considered as an item of urgent business because the report was due to be considered at the Cabinet meeting on 26 May and it was therefore not possible to delay scrutiny of this issue for a future meeting of the Board and because members of the Board had expressed a particular interest in scrutinising this issue. The Portfolio Holder for Community Safety presented the report, a copy of which had been circulated to each Member and a copy of which appears as Appendix 'B' to these Minutes in the Minute Book. The Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and the Portfolio Holder for Transport, Cleansing and Waste outlined the key issues within the report and responded to points raised by the Board including:

Cllr D Kelsey left the meeting at 7:10pm.

·       That the pilot did not remove any of the cost of removing fly-tipping. The service was to cover investigations and potentially reduce instances of fly-tipping and there would be an opportunity to recover some of the cost if investigations were successful.

·       Whether other options to address fly-tipping had been considered. Other areas had removed the services charges for visiting the tip at certain times, whether there could be provision for household collections for some waste or other options to reduce fly-tipping which do not involve enforcement.

·       That an In-House Service was looked at but this would require additional staff within regulatory services. Whereas an external provider could focus on fly-tipping and were specialists in the service.

·       There wasn’t currently a deterrent for householders not to fly-tip, although there had been lots of encouragement for people on how to address things correctly.

·       There was also a need to push the message out on how to manage waste responsibly.

There were a number of requests to address issues outlined within the non-public appendix the Board therefore:

RESOLVED that under Section 100 (A)(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the following item of business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraph 3in Part I of Schedule 12A of the Act and that the public interest in withholding the information outweighs such interest in disclosing the information.

Cllr M Cox and Cllr L Dedman returned at 7:27pm

The meeting moved into non-public session.

During the consideration of exempt information questions were raised regarding what due diligence had been undertaken on the preferred provider, on the reputation of the provider and the process of selection, the contractual requirements, including the right to terminate the contract with 30 days-notice, risk of reputational damage

The meeting resumed in public session

Following the debate, it was proposed and seconded and subsequently resolved that Cabinet be:

RECOMMENDED to reconsider the decision, not proceed with the contract at this time and go back and look  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21