Agenda item

To enable the Committee to consider the recommendations made to it as set out in the second report from the Council’s Enforcement Arrangements Task and Finish Group into those elements of its enquiry concerning fly tipping and mobile CCTV enforcement. The report of the Task and Finish Group is set out at Appendix A to this report.

The Head of Democratic Services advised the Committee that this was the second report the Committee had received from the Enforcement Task and Finish Group. He reminded the Committee that the first report had been on Planning Enforcement and that the recommendations from that first report had been approved by Cabinet and that the Committee would (in time) be expecting to receive an update on those recommendations.

The Committee AGREED the Recommendations to Cabinet from the report that were as follows:

(1)  That, in order to develop a more holistic picture of the issues involved and the development of strategies to address them, in addition to highway fly-tipping incidents, records be kept and analysed for fly-tipping on other public land such as open spaces, public realm, Council assets, Beachfronts etc;

(2)  That further steps be undertaken to engage with volunteer litter picking groups to ensure there is greater awareness of the issues around taking waste from private property and of the steps taken by officers to identify perpetrators of fly-tipping (and the need to preserve that evidence to ensure it can be used in action against perpetrators);

(3)  To develop a similar approach to that of the London Borough of Redbridge with its online ‘Wall of Shame’ showing footage of fly-tipping with a view to encouraging understanding of the issue, the Council’s efforts to address fly tipping and to receive information on perpetrators;

(4)  To encourage residents to supply their own footage, possibly through ‘RING’ (or other manufacturers) camera-door bells of fly-tipping captured by them;

(5)  To inform Councillors that if they notice dog fouling, unretrieved dog waste, they should inform the Council’s Community Safety Team who can look at deployment of Ambassadors with a view to detecting the perpetrators and, if the issues persist, to evidence a decision to deploy mobile CCTV cameras to address the problem;

(6)  That consideration be given to the deployment of a mobile ‘phone application for reporting incidents of fly-tipping and other crimes such as dog fouling and graffiti similar to that in place in Cheshire West and Chester Council;

(7)  To consider how best to support members of the public to find details of licensed waste carriers (after the UK Government has concluded its review of the online access to that data);

(8)  That details of fly-tipping hot spots on the highway/public land in the District be circulated to Councillors together with the stepped approach to enforcement relevant to that hot spot site and that this should be alongside summary details of the deployment of mobile CCTV cameras as part of addressing environmental crimes such as fly-tipping;

(9)  That the reasons for the non-deployment of a mains powered or a battery powered CCTV camera in the High Street, Clacton-on-Sea with a view to deterring and/or detecting fly-tipping at the junction with Beach Road be set out and addressed with the relevant decision makers.

(10)                That, on the basis that the Council’s policies, procedures and codes in respect of CCTV are reviewed in this current calendar year, they be amended to provide that as and when CCTV cameras are to be purchased, or grant applications made to fund CCTV cameras, consideration be given to the relative benefit of those cameras having AI functionality that can be deployed and that for mobile CCTV cameras consideration should also be given to alternative acquisition options such as rental rather than purchase.