New resources won to tackle plague of fly tipping

Nicole, Scott and Jonathan highlight the 'plague' of rubbish

Pressure from the public and Green Party campaigners has won extra resources to tackle the problem of fly tipping, which has been  plaguing Streatham.

Three new environmental enforcement officers have been employed to investigate and enforce illegal flytipping throughout Lambeth.

Since their appointment on 2 October, they have issued 133 Fixed Penalty Notices for fly tipping offences, including 11 in the Streatham area. of which 4 were in St Leonard’s ward.

Council fails to tackle flytipping in Streatham

Nicole Griffiths: championing cleaner streets

Only four people have been fined for fly-tipping in Streatham, since the council gained powers to issue fines, Green party campaigner Nicole Griffiths has discovered.

Nicole found that Lambeth has the worst record among south London boroughs for fining fly-tippers, with only 35 offenders fined in 16 months - compared to 36 in Merton, 41 in Bromley, 58 in Lewisham, 268 in Croydon, and 117 in just 8 months in Wandsworth. Southwark did not provide figures.

Nicole said: "Flytipping is a blight on our community and these figures show that Lambeth Council is not yet taking it seriously in Streatham. Greens will do all we can to keep our streets clean."

The Green Party has set up a shortcode to make it easier to report flytipping to Lambeth Council: http://bit.do/flytipping (This link is now correct - apologies, previous version didn't).

Lambeth's full response, ward by ward, can be seen here.

Congratulations to Potters Lane litter pickers

Results of litter pick

Congratulations to the volunteers who turned out to clean up Potters Lane alleyway and footbridge neaer Streatham Common station at the weekend.

They managed to fill 13 black sacks of garden waste/rubbish, 2 large green garden waste bags and 10 bags of recycling (beer cans & bottles).

Nicole Griffiths lends a hand

The Green Team's Nicole Griffiths was part of the small group led by local resident Joanna Pascoe.

The area, which is owned by Network Rail, is blighted by fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour. The litter problem has worsened since bins were removed.

Streatham Green councillor Scott Ainslie is this week raising the issue with the officers responsible  for rubbish collection and fly-tipping and will report back.

Cllr Ainslie has requested bins are reinsituted and regular sweeps made by rubbish collectors, to avoid residents having to undertake this potentially hazardous work in future.

Volunteers in action

After the Clean Up

+16Cases are referred to court, where offenders can be fined up to £50,000 in magistrates' courts, an unlimited amount of fines in crown courts, as well as community punishment orders or prison sentences of up to 5 years.

Lambeth Council proposes "collecting fly-tipping less frequently"

Lambeth Council has now produced its long-awaited report to try and tackle the environmental crime in Streatham, and more widely in Lambeth.  You can read it here

Section 5 on fly-tipping will be the interesting one to many people.  It contains the surprising statement:

"Fly tipping has been a problem nationally for many years, however, from the table at 1.15 we can see that the problem is reducing in Lambeth"

There is in fact no table at 1.15. There is however a table at 1.19 which shows flytipping waste in Lambeth as follows:

Far from reducing, as residents know all too well, it seems that after a slow move downwards it has suddenly spiked and the estimate for this year will reach epidemic proportions!

The report suggests that this is because of the new bin policy.  This is interesting because Lambeth Council have previously denied that the increase in fly-tipping has been down to the new bin policy.

But the really interesting part is in the report's recommendations.  In particular:

"Trucks will no longer travel around the borough on a daily basis looking for fly tipped waste" 

and...

"Collecting fly tips less frequently"

The background to all this, as the report makes clear, is budget cuts.

It's going to be an interesting meeting on 11th December in Streatham, when the report is discussed.  Do go along and have your say!

(Hat-tip to @jason_cobb for flagging this up here )