Litter louts cough up more than £1.5m in crackdown

More than £1.5 million was paid out by litter louts given fixed penalty tickets in the past year, according to figures published today.

Local authorities can charge people caught littering between £50 and £80 using fixed penalty notices (FPN).

New Government figures show a 32 per cent rise in the number of tickets issued in England from 33,033 in 2005/6 to 43,624 in 2006/07.

And the statistics show an even steeper rise of 49 per cent in the number of tickets which are actually paid, with 77.1 per cent of notices now resulting in full payment.

This meant a national total of £1,521,905 was collected from litter louts across England in the period from April 2006 to March 2007.

Jonathan Shaw, the Minister for Local Environment Quality, said: "Ask communities what concerns them most about the area they live in and litter is near the top of list. Residents are right to expect their council to take a tough stance.

"I'm 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.

"But fixed penalty notices are only effective if local authorities take steps to ensure that they are paid - and, if they're not, that effective action is taken at local level.

"I'm pleased to see that this has followed through in the results with an increase in payment rates, although there is still more to do."

Littering accounts for around three quarters of the almost £2 million collected in England from fixed penalty tickets issued for a range of anti-social nuisances.

These include 3,675 notices issued for dog fouling, 1,657 for nuisance parking and 469 for abandoned vehicle between April 2006 and March this year.

But across England only seven tickets were issued in the same period for noise nuisance and just 42 for graffiti.

The figures show that overall the total number of FPNs issued for nuisance offences across the whole of England rose by 42 per cent from 38,062 in 2005/6 to 54,015 in 2006/07 with the overall national payment rate up to 72.4 per cent from 57 per cent.

Keep Britain Tidy's Deputy Chief Executive Ian Clayton said: "It's good to see that more fines have been issued and most importantly that more are being paid.

"Our research has shown that the threat of a fine will encourage people not to litter, but people need to believe that they are going to get caught."

In 2005, local authorities were given a new range of powers to tackle a range of "nuisances" through FPNs.

It is now an offence to drop litter, including cigarette butts and discarded chewing gum, anywhere.

Topping the list of councils issuing litter notices was Manchester with 2,818, followed by the London Borough of Southwark with 2,809 and Nottingham with 2,268.

Other authorities which issued more than 1,000 FPNs in the year were Tower Hamlets, Leeds, Newcastle, Trafford, Wakefield and Westminster.

And Sunderland tops the dog-fouling table with 306 tickets issued in the last year.