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Revised environmental enforcement and car parking arrangements

Published: 15/09/2017

Flintshire County Council enforcement officers provide both environmental and civil parking enforcement. A specialist partner, Kingdom, has been delivering environmental enforcement of such things as dog fouling and littering for the past year as a 12 month pilot. The Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee will be asked to review the proposal to procure a single Business Partner on a short term 2 year contract (with an option to extend based on performance) to undertake the enforcement of low level environmental crime, such as dog control and car parking offences on behalf of the Council. This will leave the in-house team to deal with high level environmental crime issues such as fly tipping, side waste and abandoned vehicles. The current pilot with Kingdom has been successful, with 4,726 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued from July 16 to June 17, compared with 195 issued in the previous year. This has had a beneficial impact on the cleanliness of our town centres and open spaces demonstrated by our improved performance measured through national audits undertaken by Keep Wales Tidy. The Council also has a statutory duty to collect household waste from all domestic properties and has specific powers to issue FPNs to residents who do not present their waste in the correct containers (for example, waste in plastic bags instead of the bin provided by the Council). In July, the Cabinet approved a report introducing changes to the Council’s waste and recycling service – including enforcement of persistent residents who continue to leave side waste out after receiving advice and warnings. The Committee will also be asked how it would prefer the Council to deal with side waste enforcement. Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Streetscene, Councillor Carolyn Thomas, said: “This report reviews the best option for the service taking into account the range of enforcement activities it is required to deliver. The report makes a recommendation to engage a business partner to undertake the enforcement of low level environmental crime, dog control and car parking offences on behalf of the Council. The enforcement of fly tipping and abandoned vehicles will remain with the Council along with the enforcement of black wheel bin side waste.” The recommendations from the Committee will be considered at a Cabinet meeting later this month.