An agreement to provide litter enforcement officers in Chichester District will continue for a further three years.
In 2017, Chichester District Council signed an agreement with East Hampshire District Council to provide litter enforcement officers in the district following the Government’s National Litter Strategy and as part of the council’s Against Litter campaign.
The partnership has proved extremely successful and an audit of litter before and since the scheme has been introduced has shown a significant drop in the amount of litter picked up across the district by the council’s Contract Services team.
The litter enforcement officers have powers to issue fixed penalty notices to members of the public who they see dropping litter, such as cigarette butts, chewing gum and dog waste bags. They are also able to deal with dog fouling under Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) as well as carrying out more educational work with the public.
Since the contract began, they have issued more than 4,100 fixed penalty notices, mostly in Chichester, but other hotspots have included Selsey and Midhurst.
“One of our priorities as a council is to look after our natural and built environment and we know that the public want us to tackle littering and provide an element of enforcement as part of this,” says Councillor Penny Plant, Cabinet Member for Environment at Chichester District Council. “We are very pleased with how the arrangement with East Hampshire District Council has worked and with how effective the litter enforcement officers have been. The arrangement is also cost neutral to the council, so this means it is excellent value for our residents.
“While enforcement is largely carried out during week days and within office hours, this has been a very flexible agreement, and means that we can ask for out of hours and weekend cover as well as targeting particular hot spot areas when we need to. Last year for example, we asked the officers to target the beaches and Bosham Hoe where we were aware of covid-related littering issues.”
For more information about the council’s Against Litter campaign see www.chichester.gov.uk/againstlitter
