Buckinghamshire Council takes on new powers to fight the fly tippers

At its very first meeting on 21 April, Buckinghamshire Council’s Cabinet marked a renewed commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to fly tipping by introducing on-the-spot fines as an additional power in the fight against the minority that commit these antisocial offences.

The Cabinet voted unanimously to introduce £400 fixed penalty notice fines for fly tipping – the highest amount allowed under central government powers that were brought in so that local authorities could bring waste crime offenders to justice quickly.

Before becoming a unitary council, it was impractical to introduce fixed penalty notices for waste crime in Buckinghamshire due to the legal complexity of working through five different authorities.

Bill Chapple OBE, Buckinghamshire Council Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change, explained: “The former county and district councils had an excellent record of working together to fight fly tipping, giving the county very high rates of detection and prosecution of waste crime.

“But unitary status allows Buckinghamshire Council to streamline our enforcement operations, and focus on achieving even better outcomes. One of the immediate advantages is that we are now in a position to bring in fixed penalty notices. These allow us to bring fly tippers to book quickly – though I want to make it clear that, where appropriate, the Council will continue to prosecute through the Courts as part of our zero tolerance approach to fly tipping.”

To watch the webcast of the meeting and download the background documentation, go to: https://buckinghamshire.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/484182/start_time/6384000?force_language_code=en_GB