Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
331-339)
MS SAMANTHA
HARDING, MR
NEIL SINDEN,
MR PHIL
BARTON AND
MR MIKE
PHILLIPS
24 NOVEMBER 2008
Q331 Chairman: Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen. Can I apologise to members of the public
and our witnesses especially for the delay in starting. When we
arranged this evidence session we were not briefed by the Chancellor
that he was going to have the Pre-Budget Report today. Can I formally
welcome from the Campaign to Protect Rural England Samantha Harding,
who is the "Stop the Drop" campaign manager, and Mr
Neil Sinden, who is their policy director. From Encams we have
Mr Phil Barton, their chief executive, and Mr Mike Phillips, their
chairman. My first question is addressed specifically to Encams.
Perhaps you would like to tell us how bad England's litter problem
is. Where is it worst? Why and what can we do to get on top of
it?
Mr Barton: We have now been conducting
surveys over a seven year period and in that time we have monitored
more than 10,000 sites across England. Each year that we have
done that with the exception of one, the standard has been categorised
by us as unsatisfactory. The one year it just tipped into satisfactory,
but that is a very sweeping statement and of course there are
wide variations between different areas and different parts of
the country. The surveys measure only the presence or absence
of litter, not how much is dropped or by whom. Litter is not caused
only by individuals dropping items of litter; it is also made
up of items falling from vehicles, from construction sites, blown
around, from flooding or resulting from households, businesses
and agricultural waste.
Q332 Chairman: Does this Government's
Waste Strategy do anything to stop us being such a messy lot?
Mr Barton: I am not here primarily
to talk about the Waste Strategy which does not cover litter.
That is an interesting issue. We have been working with the government.
You asked me whether it was getting worse or not. In terms of
the regions, the variance between the cleanest region, which has
been fairly consistently the south west, and the dirtiest, which
is the north west, is only about nine percentage points. It varies
between the low sixties and the low seventies in terms of our
measuring. In the worst performing areas, we have been taking
initiatives. We have established the North West Liveability Foundation
which is looking specifically at trying to address that in the
north west. In London, where Capital Standards is a project which
most of the London boroughs are working with us and the Assembly
on, there is clear evidence that concerted action can have an
effect. Even so, it has moved London from one of the poorest to
one in the middle of the pack. Remember we are talking about the
public realm in our survey, not private land. Those that consistently
come out the cleanest are transport facilities, railway stations,
bus stations, that sort of thing, rather than the track or the
roads, public open space and town centres. Those which come out
the worst are consistently non-main and non-rural roads. In other
words, suburban roads of one sort or another, high density housing
areas and suburban and out of town retail areas. In terms of the
problem, it is quite patchy and quite variable. Overall over the
last seven years, it has been pretty consistent and unsatisfactory.
Therefore, there is a substantial challenge to us all to take
it forward.
Q333 Chairman: We seem to have lots
of potential lines of enforcement both for litter and indeed for
fly tipping, but enforcement seems to be inconsistent. Why is
that?
Mr Barton: It is inconsistent.
We have been doing a lot of work with local authorities and other
land owners on training for enforcement. The Clean Neighbourhoods
and Environment Act 1995 gave new powers to local authorities
and other land owners and I think it did take some time for the
implications of that to filter through. It is very difficult also
for local authorities. They get very unfair and mixed criticism
from the media. On the one hand there is a strong line which says
Britain is dreadful. We must do something about it. Local authorities,
you are not doing enough. On the other hand when they do, we have
stories about what we call Sausagegate, where somebody's child
dropped a sausage roll in Hull. There was a course of action taken
and the council was vilified by the media. A care worker was fined
for throwing chips from her car and a schoolgirl was fined £75
for leaving a wooden ice-cream stick on the wall. There is a very
mixed message coming from the media. I think that is quite a major
challenge for local authorities but nonetheless there ought to
be more consistent enforcement action by more of them.
Q334 Chairman: To the CPRE, I mentioned
the question of fly tipping which is a serious problem in some
parts of the countryside. What is your organisation's view of
fly tipping, enforcement and deterrence?
Mr Sinden: We think it is a growing
problem. We believe that enforcement is not sufficient and deterrents
arguably are not sufficient to deter those who are involved.
Q335 Chairman: Why is that?
Mr Sinden: There are loopholes
in the law, in the legal framework. There are big issues about
how one can deal with fly tipping on private land. That is an
issue we need to explore in more depth. In terms of other areas
where litter has become a growing problem, we were startled by
a statistic revealed to us by the Marine Conservation Society
a short while ago which reported a 90% increase in beach litter
since 2004. One of the reasons why Bill Bryson, our new president,
is interested in this is because he perceives, I think quite correctly,
that in many parts of the countryside, particularly along rural
roads and along some of our railway tracks, litter is a growing,
very significant problem.
Q336 David Lepper: You said suburban
streets were among those with some of the worst problems. Have
you looked at whether there is any correlation between areas where
the local authority uses wheelie bins or container bins in the
streets for household refuse collection and those where it is
still black, plastic bags, or does it not make a difference?
Mr Phillips: Very early on when
wheelie bins were starting to become popular, research was undertaken
by Encams which showed a significant reduction in refuse in those
areas where wheelie bins were being used. Animal damage to black
sacks, people leaving sacks open and so on all contribute and
it is a significant problem still with waste management in terms
of trade waste.
Q337 Paddy Tipping: You talked about
fly tipping on private land. I was on the urban fringe of Nottingham
yesterday to see derelict cars and rusting fridges on the edges
of a farmer's field. I have the impression you have some proposals
on this. What are they?
Mr Sinden: I think it is worth
reflecting on the very low levels of successful prosecutions against
fly tipping. We think it needs to be made easier for local authorities
to take action where fly tipping is taking place and there is
a problem. We also believe that the loophole—
Q338 Chairman: You say it should
be made easier. How? Why is it difficult now?
Mr Sinden: It is difficult to
track down people who are responsible for dumping the waste. We
have been looking at Defra's illegal waste tipping action plan,
which is itself looking at how the Environment Agency can be given
greater powers to track and bring to court cases where there is
clear evidence that fly tipping is being carried out by particular
individuals or those using particular vehicles.
Ms Harding: In relation to how
we can catch people or how we can ensure that laws are enforced,
that is difficult in rural areas. Short of putting CCTV cameras
in every layby, it becomes very difficult. Colleagues that we
are meeting through the National Fly Tipping Prevention Group
are saying that there are broader issues around landfill tax.
Even the dreaded fortnightly bin collections have been cited in
increasing household waste and recorded by the Defra flycapture
statistics about what is constituting the fly tipped waste. There
are also issues that came through the Jill Dando Institute about
the fact that some people who are involved in waste disposal have
very low levels of literacy and a lack of access to computers
for instance, so the legislation around how you can register yourself
to deposit waste legally is inaccessible to some people.
Mr Sinden: One of the other areas
we would like to look at is how it can be made possible for local
authorities to remove fly tipping from private land through better
relations between local authorities and land owners who are suffering
from this problem on a regular basis.
Q339 Paddy Tipping: With a recharge
basis?
Mr Sinden: That could be done
but we are also aware that in some parts of the country local
authorities have undertaken to remove fly tipped waste from certain
parts of land, where the land owner is able to move it from the
dumping place to a place which is more easily accessible by local
authorities.
Mr Phillips: As an ex-senior local
government officer, I can briefly comment on that because I believe
there is a significant problem there. You have to show that people
are knowingly allowing this refuse. We have cleaned up private
land at council tax payers' expense but I have twice been on government
groups and there has been a marked concern by the relevant governments
of the time about action to deal with private land. The obligations
are there in terms of public land. There are now powers local
authorities can use in terms of litter on areas of private land,
retail or industrial estates etc. They are not as well used perhaps
as they should be and I would admit that. We have in Encams a
Cleaner Safer Greener network and through that we have identified
there are a number of authorities who are using those powers to
ensure good practice. We want to disseminate that good practice
more widely to other authorities. There are some powers there
but there was and still is this resistance about enforcement on
private land.
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