Litter Day of Action
About the campaign
Anyone caught dropping litter can receive a Fixed Penalty Notice of £50 or referral to the Procurator Fiscal for the consideration of a prosecution. However, research carried out by Keep Scotland Tidy has indicated that while people are aware that it is an offence to drop litter, there is not enough publicity about people receiving a fine to make it a credible threat or deterrent.
To address this issue, and encourage greater use of the litter enforcement powers available to local authorities, Keep Scotland Tidy founded a national ‘Litter Day of Action’ in 2007. This has become established as an annual event, with Keep Scotland Tidy coordinating the campaign in May each year.
Joint patrols of uniformed police and local authority officers are carried out across Scotland simultaneously to help raise the profile of littering as an offence and demonstrate that the enforcement agencies have a serious desire to tackle it. With national support by the police service in Scotland, patrols are arranged at a local level, enabling the use of local intelligence to direct action.
Results
All 32 Scottish local authorities and the eight police forces are invited to support the campaign. In 2009, 23 local authorities and seven police forces took part, supplying a total of 155 officers on the day. The combined efforts of 16 local authority areas issued a total of 178 fixed penalty notices between them to litterers on that day, with several local authorities taking more action on this one organised day than in the whole of the previous year.
Background information
Supporting agencies
- Aberdeen City
- Amey
- Angus
- City of Edinburgh
- Clackmannanshire
- Dumfries & Galloway
- Dundee City
- East Ayrshire
- East Dunbartonshire
- Falkirk
- Fife
- Glasgow City
- Highland
- Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park
- Moray
- North Lanarkshire
- Perth & Kinross
- Renfrewshire
- South Ayrshire
- South Lanarkshire
- Stirling
- West Dunbartonshire
- West Lothian
- Central Scotland Police
- Dumfries &Galloway Police
- Grampian Police Lothian &Borders Police
- Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS)
Public attitudes towards litter
Research carried out by Keep Scotland Tidy into "Public Attitudes to Litter & Littering in Scotland" identified enforcement and fines as one of the ways forward in tackling the litter problem.
The research highlighted the fact that the threat of a financial penalty has the potential to work as an effective deterrent to littering. Increasing the number of litter wardens, to act as a deterrent and encourage people not to litter was felt by members of the public to be likely to have a positive effect. Fines, if effectively enforced and communicated, were considered a valuable method of preventing litter and punishing litterers.
Further, the research identified that steep fines reflect the seriousness of the offence and communicate that it is an important issue. However, for the tactic to be effective, fines must be - and must be seen to be - more frequently enforced.
At the Scottish Government Litter summit held on 26th November 2008 a "State of the Nation Littering Report" was produced by Keep Scotland Tidy, which identified ten potential ways forward to tackle the litter problem.
One of these suggestions was the encouragement of enforcement agencies to make greater, and more consistent use of the litter enforcement powers they have, ensuring that the public area aware of this action through the press and media.
Litter and the law
Section 87 of Environmental Protection Act 1990 creates the offence of littering. The places to which the section applies are any public open space and any relevant land in the control of a duty body. Littering is a criminal offence and is subject to a maximum fine of £2,500.
Enforcement rests principally with local authorities and where an authorised officer of a litter authority has reason to believe that a person has committed an offence under Section 87 in the area of the authority.
A police officer has the same powers to enforce Section 87 and this extends to the same standard and procedure as the local authority officer when issuing a fixed penalty notice.
Fixed Penalty Notices
As an alternative to prosecution of offenders under Section 87, Section 88 provides a power for local authorities to issue Fixed Penalty Notices. On payment of the penalty, liability to conviction for the offence is discharged. The current Fixed Penalty Notice in Scotland is £50.
Where the person fails to accept the offer of the fixed penalty notice a report is prepared for the procurator fiscal for the consideration of a question of a prosecution.
Where the fixed penalty notice is accepted but is not paid within 14 days, similarly a report is submitted to the procurator fiscal for the consideration of a question of a prosecution for the offence under section 87.
The officer should submit a report to the procurator fiscal with sufficient evidence to substantiate the offence under section 87.
Prosecutions
Since 2001, Keep Scotland Beautiful has monitored the use of the litter enforcement powers contained in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 by Scottish local authorities. The last monitoring survey was carried out in June 2007 for action during the financial year April 2006 to March 2007, following previous reviews in 2005 and 2001.
In the 2007 report, seven local authorities had taken action under section 87 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 for the offence of leaving or dropping litter, with the total number of prosecutions for the year being 247.
Thirty-one Scottish local authorities had adopted the Fixed Penalty Scheme for littering, with 26 of those authorities issuing a total of 4,367 fixed penalty notices in the 2006/2007 financial year.