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.

A chance to get your questions answered about fly-tipping, dumping and cleaning up Streatham!

Streatham appears to be in the grip of a fly-tipping and dumping epidemic. Meanwhile the latest annual figures (released last week) show Lambeth Council's recycling rate has fallen below 2006 levels, and Lambeth is sending its waste out of borough for incineration, contributing to deadly air pollution.

Lambeth Council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee is coming to Streatham Library to discuss these and other issues on Thursday 11th December. All residents are able to attend. Officers and councillors will be available from 6.00pm to answer individual questions, before the formal committee proceeding take place between 7.00pm amd 9.00pm.

The address is: Streatham Library, 63 Streatham High Road, Streatham, London SW16 1PN

New signs to tackle flytipping

We are working with council officers and residents to develop a strategy to tackle the ongoing problem of flytipping in Streatham.

As part of that strategy which we believe must include a range of different measures to tackle the different aspects of the problem, the council have produced these signs, designed to go in flytipping hotspots.

If you have a particular area prone to flytipping and dumping where you think a sign should go, please let us know.

You can contact us: streathamgreenparty (at) gmail.com

For some of the other ways we are working to tackle local flytipping and dumping see:

http://streathamnews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/progress-at-grot-spot-on-mitcham-lane.html

http://streathamnews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/sorting-out-rubbish-around-streatham.html

Sorting out the rubbish around Streatham Green on Mitcham Lane and Streatham High Road

We have asked Lambeth council again to make more regular inspections and clean the area around Streatham Green on Mitcham Lane.

In some places there are so many rubbish bags that they are blocking the pavement and the areas around the bus stops. They are quite often there for days before they are collected.

Here are some of the pictures we took recently in this area: