It can be unwise, even dangerous, to confront litter louts. But now the silent majority are to be empowered to “dob them in” — and land them with a £500 fine to pay.
Buckinghamshire council is to become the first local authority to invite the public to send in videos and photographs, filmed on dashcams and mobile phones, of motorists treating roadside verges as dumping grounds.
Council staff will review videos sent to its web portal, and will issue the penalty to the keeper of the vehicle if the footage clearly shows rubbish being thrown out of the vehicle and captures its registration plate. The keeper is liable, even if the litter was discarded by someone else.
There will be no discount for paying it swiftly, and the penalty will double to £1,000 if it is not paid within 28 days.
Martin Tett, the Conservative leader of the council, said: “If you chuck a plastic bottle or a half-eaten Chinese meal or whatever else out of the car window, then it doesn’t matter where you live. If we’ve got the number plate and evidence of it happening, we will find you.”
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He said the scale of the problem in the county, which is equally bad, or worse, in councils all round Britain, meant he had no alternative but to act.
Tett said: “On our country lanes, you will see mile after mile of waste paper, plastic bottles, tin, cans — all sorts of stuff chucked out of car windows. It’s one of the things people hate the most.
“People expect that some sort of magic ‘waste fairy’ will come along and pick it up. Local government is financially challenged, so we no longer have vast armies of people who go out litter-picking all the time. We only litter-pick regularly in towns and town centres, and in some rural areas we only do it once a year.”
Tett expects provisions empowering the public to send in videos, or photographs, to be adopted by the council in June or July, and the new system to be introduced in August.
Under new powers to tackle antisocial behaviour introduced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs the maximum penalty for people caught littering has risen from £150 to £500. Councils are allowed to use the receipts money to fund the cost of cleaning up the mess.
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The county has previously been blighted by fly-tippers, and Tett said he had “no sympathy whatsoever” for complaints that the penalty may be disproportionate. He said: “I already get the excuses with fly-tipping. People say, ‘I just stopped the car and forgot to put the old tyres and fridge back in.’”
No precise figures exist to show how much worse littering has become in Buckinghamshire, but the tonnage of waste collected through street cleaning has risen by 24 per cent in the five years between 2018 and 2023, from 2,031 to 2,524 tonnes a year.
It costs the council £3.5 million each year for its full-time team of 90 to deal with litter, which can cause harm as well as being an eyesore. Litter choked the roadside ditches and drains which are meant to keep the carriageway clear of water on the five-mile stretch of the A412 between Denham and George Green. Flooding became so dangerous that the council had to spend £20,000 in January to clean up the mess.
Offenders caught on camera will receive their fixed penalties under civil, not criminal, law. Video evidence from the public can already be used in criminal law cases, but the system is so cumbersome that few prosecutions take place. There were just 14 such cases pursued by Buckinghamshire council in the past year, including one where a member of the public threw a cigarette butt out of a car window and was caught on camera by a manager from the waste enforcement department.
Sources at the council say they are conscious that it may appear harsh to issue a £500 penalty to someone for throwing out an apple core, and they expect to use their discretion in such cases. However, if they give a blanket exemption to certain types of litter, there is a risk that offenders will attempt to game the system by launching spurious appeals.
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Danny Lucas, a businessman who spent more than £60,000 of his own money to clean up the A20 near his family business in Wrotham, Kent, welcomed the new scheme. “We have a national emergency that needs a massive shake-up to improve standards and safety on Britain’s roads,” he said.
John Read, founder of the campaign group Clean up Britain, said: “It’s not a snoopers’ charter. Unfortunately we have a lot of antisocial people in this country, who insist on behaving badly, and it’s ruining it for the silent, responsible majority who want to live in a clean and pleasant land. It will give those who care the power to do something about it.”
