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Video: Bill Bryson on the blight on Britain's streets

The growing litter levels that are the scourge of the British countryside are to be tackled with a national campaign and tough laws. A pilot scheme in the capital, where litter louts would be tracked down in the same way that police enforce speeding fines, could be enforced across the country.

The crackdown comes as the author Bill Bryson, president of the Campign for the Protection of Rural England, called for tougher penalties for litterers and urged councils to be more proactive in catching them.

“Litterers and fly-tippers must be made to feel that there is a reasonable chance they will be caught and that, if caught, they will be given a punishment that is meaningfully painful,” he writes in The Times today, as he urges people to support the organisation’s campaign against littering.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is considering expanding the power of local authorities to tackle the problem of rubbish being dumped from car windows on to roadside verges. The aim is to close a loophole in the law that requires local authorities to prove the identity of the person who discards litter from a car.

Under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 council wardens were given powers to issue fixed penalty notices of between £50 and £80. The average fine across the country is £75. Traffic wardens, police community support officers and park wardens usually issue the tickets but councils have appealed to local people to report culprits and note down their car numbers.

Officers are having difficulty proving the identity of the litter lout even if they know the vehicle registration number and have contacted the vehicle’s owner, and so most prosecutions fail. Some councils use CCTV footage to find culprits and others publish photographs of offenders in local newspapers. The new powers are expected to result in a wider increase in the use of cameras.

Laws in London, due to come into force in June, will allow the capital’s boroughs to pursue registered keepers of vehicles to pay fines for litter thrown from their cars. If the fines are unpaid car owners face legal action through the civil courts or can be threatened with the bailiffs.

Joan Ruddock, Minister for Waste, confirmed that councils in England are anxious to obtain similar powers. The issue is being examined by Defra and at the Home Office.

She said: “There is no excuse for littering, particulary from cars, as people can save rubbish inside their car and dispose of it at home. I am always horrified and angry when I see people throw something from a car.”

She is anxious first to see how the laws work out in London and, while local councils claim that litter from traffic accounts for almost 70 per cent of the problem, she has asked for more evidence of the problem.

She has also asked officials to see if these extra powers could be introduced by a speedier route than primary legislation in Parliament.

She is to meet Paul Bettison, chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA) environment board on Monday. He has already raised the issue with her office and is keen to conduct a pilot scheme at his Bracknell Forest Council.

Mr Bettison said: “At a time when councils are coming under increasing pressure to deal with littering, some of the current legislation is a mire of confusion. Registered keepers of vehicles can be prosecuted for speeding if details of the offender are given, so why not for littering?”

Under current guidance from Defra councils are advised not to issue fixed penalties for littering from vehicles unless the offender can be positively identified. This is in accordance with section 87 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The LGA has put forward two possible remedies.

One is to place responsibility for litter dropped from a vehicle on to the owner or registered keeper of the vehicle. The second option is for local authorities to have the power to obtain details of the offender by writing to the registered keeper. Failure to respond, as with speeding fines, would also be an offence.

Miss Ruddock said that she supported Bill Bryson’s campaign: “What we are dealing with is the need for behaviour change. I share Bill’s anger and frustration and his concerns about the blight to rural areas where you see verges littered with plastic bags.”

She insisted that litter was a priority for the Government and that laws had been introduced to tackle fly-tipping and to allow council wardens to issue fixed penalty notices to litter louts.There has not been a high-profile government campaign against litter since the early 1980s.

Tonnes and sums

— £663m was spent by councils last year on measures to clean up the country, compared with £450 million spent in 2005

— 30m tonnes of litter are collected in Britain each year

— 1.3m pieces of litter are dropped in Britain every weekend

— 40% of rubbish discarded on Britain’s streets comes from smokers. The number of cigarette ends dropped has gone up 43 per cent since the start of the nationwide smoking ban last year

— 2.6m instances of fly-tipping are reported each year

— £1,521,904 was raised from the 43,624 fixed-penalty notices issued by council wardens for littering

— £75 average fixed-penalty fines for throwing litter. Councils can fix penalties at between £50 and £80

— 27% of places surveyed were found to have an unacceptable level of litter in a Keep Britain Tidy survey in 2007. This is up 10 per cent on 2006 and 40 per cent on 2005

Source: Defra, Encams, LGA, Times archives

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