Fly-tipping crackdown set to start in Telford
A council has committed to getting tougher in its crackdown on fly-tipping after thousands of incidents in just 12 months.
Telford & Wrekin Council's cabinet is this week expected to approve a new fly tipping strategy – including new officers to enforce the policies.
If approved, the strategy will take six months to develop and will be delivered by new 'Community Action Teams' – paid for jointly by parish councils and Telford & Wrekin Council.
The council said the new teams will work on specifically local issues within the areas of the town or parish councils funding them.
Action teams will include Neighbourhood Enforcement Officers from Telford & Wrekin Council’s Public Protection Team.
Councillor Richard Overton, Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet member for enforcement said: “We have always adopted the principle of education first and enforcement later.
"Any fines or punishments have always been issued as a last resort to the persistent few who haven’t taken on board the advice, guidance, warnings and reminders.
“Our work with one fast food chain in clearing litter illustrates how we try to find better ways of keeping the borough clean without resorting straight to fines. I am very grateful to them for their help in tackling littering.
“Over the last year, we really ramped up our enforcement work to keep residents and businesses safe.
Successes
"We employed a number of Neighbourhood Enforcement Officers, initially to deal with parking issues, but they then moved on to work on environmental crime and anti-social behaviour.
"With the additional officers through the Community Action Team, our next move will be to take those experiences and successes of the last year and the best practices established during that time and put it all into a new fly-tipping strategy.
“The new Community Action Teams will begin to appear from April 2021 and will be tasked locally by partnering Town and Parish Councils to address concerns in their areas."
The council said the new policy follows a year which has seen its 'Neighbourhood Enforcement Officers' respond to 7,500 reports of fly-tipping.
The authority said they had investigated more than five thousand of them, resulting in the issuing of more than a thousand warnings and fixed penalty notices.
The team also dealt with more than 700 reports of littering, almost 200 reports of graffiti and more than 580 reported abandoned vehicles.
A statement from the council said: "Like many areas across the country, the summer of last year also saw a significant increase in littering across the borough with evidence particularly from fast food restaurants.
"Telford & Wrekin Council wrote to all drive-through restaurants to ask for their help in reducing the amount of litter. It led to a partnership with one fast food chain which involved highlighting litter hotspots near their restaurants that, in turn, was cleared in litter-picks carried out by their own staff."
