Householders pay £1.5m in fines for breaking baffling waste 'crimes', such as leaving bags out on the wrong day

Nearly 44,000 people received £100 fines for "crimes" such as leaving their rubbish out on the wrong day or putting out black bags alongside their wheelie bins.

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The boom in on-the-spot fines - now running at well over 100 a day - meant town halls collected some £1.5million last year.

It came as the Government urged local authorities to employ bigger "bin police" forces to enforce complex collection schemes.

New powers to hand out tickets were conferred on town hall officials last year and have contributed to a near 20-fold increase in numbers handed out for rubbish offences over the past five years.

Ministers said the tickets are handed out for littering and mean that councils are working harder to keep the streets clean.

But offences also include the growing number in which families are punished for failing to obey complex compulsory recycling rules, or who leave out "side waste" alongside their bins, or whose wheelie bin lids fail to close because of the amount of rubbish inside.

Tories and campaigners said councils are picking on the easy target of householders who break bin rules rather than people who drop litter on the streets.

Tory local government spokesman Eric Pickles said: "Litter fines are soaring as a result of Whitehall bureaucrats axing weekly rubbish collections and enforcing "no side waste" policies on hard-working households. The real victims are families."

Christine Melsom of the council tax protest group Is It Fair? said: "You only have to look at any street in a town and see the litter to realise they are not targeting the people who drop it."

The new figures show that there were 43,624 on-the-spot fines handed out for litter offences in the year to March 2007.

This was 32 per cent up on the 33,033 similar fines in the 12 months up to March 2006.

The numbers compare with 2,311 onthe-spot litter fines in the year to March 2002.

Nearly 27,000 of the tickets were paid, and town halls collected over £1.5million from them that they are allowed to keep.

Fines are usually £100 but, after discounts for early payment, the average amount paid was £56.

Environment Minister Jonathan Shaw said: "Ask communities what concerns them most about the area they live in and litter is near the top of the list.

"I am encouraged to see that more local authorities are using the powers government has provided to penalise people who are ruining our streets with thoughtless offences like littering."

The new figures for rubbish fines come amid a continuing controversy over bin collection schemes.

Ministers have advised councils to drop fortnightly collections in the wake of local election reverses and the Daily Mail's Great Bin Revolt campaign.

But councils have been given powers to proceed with trials of bin taxes that will hit middle-class families hardest.

The number of calls for help to rat catchers has risen 40 per cent since 2001 as rubbish collections have been cut back and littering and fly-tipping have worsened, the National Pest Technicians Association said yesterday.