Agenda and minutes

To approve as a correct record the Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 3 November 2016 and authorise the Chairman to sign them.

The minutes of the meeting of the Sub-Committee held on 3 November 2016 were APPROVED as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

The Sub-Committee will receive a presentation setting out the Corporate Performance Information within its remit for Quarter 3.

Key indicators within the remit of the Sub-Committee covered areas including levy waste tonnage and flytip removal. The total cost to the Council of removing flytips was in the region of £1 million per year.

Flytips were removed in an average of 1.1 days which was within target and had improved from 1.8 days in the previous quarter. Performance was felt in reality to be better than this but this was not shown due to data quality issues. This would be resolved by the introduction of in-cab technology to more accurately monitor flytip removals and hotspots.

The levy waste tonnage figures had missed their target and measures to reduce tonnage included the Love Food, Hate Waste and Love Your Clothes campaigns. A Recycle week roadshow was held in September 2016 and Restart Workshops had been set up to assist people to fix electrical appliances. Regular update were e-mailed to Members on waste minimisation events and the Council’s Green Points scheme had also proved popular.

As regards customer services, there had been approximately 15,000 direct contacts for environment issues in the last 12 months. This had been a reduction on the year, indicating that more people were accessing services on-line.

Central Government had set targets on supermarkets to reduce levels of packaging although Council influence on this was minimal.

The Sub-Committee will receive a presentation on Fly Tipping - (responsibilities and functions)

Officers explained that the biggest issue in the Havering area was households leaving waste on the highway and clarified that this was still considered a flytip. These constituted 58% of all flytips and in the year from November 2015, there had been a total of 5,598 flytips in Havering. The worst affected wards were Heaton, Romford Town and Rainham & Wennington whilst the lowest number of flytips were recorded in Emerson Park and Hacton. It was noted that flytips in excess of a tipper load only constituted 3% of the total cleared. Large scale flytips were increasing in number however and officers felt that the Police should treat flytipping as a higher priority crime.

As regards enforcement action, some 4,835 investigations had been started and a total of 323 fixed penalty notices were issued. Reasons for flytipping varied but included there being a large transient population and people feeling there was a low chance of being caught, The correct disposal of waste was costly and complex for people and it was felt to be easy to flytip in the northern parts of the borough.

The Council had an enforcement team of 11 with officers covering two wards each. Leaflets re the correct disposal of waste were given to both households and businesses. A legal file would be compiled where sufficient evidence was available. Work was also undertaken with young people via Havering Sixth Form College and the Junior Citizen scheme.

Officers sought to undertake enforcement proactively with patrols at flytipping hotspots and the use of CCTV. It was hoped to introduce solar and wind powered CCTV and Havering would be the first Council in the UK to do this. Some 300-500 flytips were reported on the Council CRM system each month although not all of these were genuine flytips. The cost of clearing a large flytip of around 20 tonnes was around £500 and was paid from the Street Cleansing budget.

It was confirmed that it was planned to put cameras at the bottom of Sunnings Lane which was a known flytip location and also at Launders Lane. Two enforcement officers had conducted an exercise in Little Gerpins Lane in December and caught four flytippers who were now in the process of being prosecuted.

Other boroughs had many more enforcement officers than Havering (approximately 80 in Newham and 150 in Westminster) but significant numbers of flytipping prosecutions were now pending. Members felt it would be useful to publicise details of flytipping prosecutions although this could not be done until convictions had been obtained.

It was illegal to use CCTV to deal with the issue of dog fouling. Officers had powers under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to tell residents where to put their waste. New legislation was also used by officers as far as possible and it was suggested that messages regarding flytipping could be put in Living and other local magazines.

It was emphasised that enforcement officers did not have Police powers but did as much as they could. Officers  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10.

The Sub-Committee will receive an update on current Topic Group if available.

Members asked for an update on the waste topic group which had not met for some time.

It was agreed that a topic group review should be undertaken on enforcement matters and officers would seek to take this forward.

It was agreed that air pollution should be an item at the next meeting of the Sub-Committee.

It was also agreed that street lighting should be scrutinised at the Sub-Committee’s next meeting. It was requested that, if possible, a representative of the relevant sub-contractor should attend in order to discuss issues with bulbs for street lamp columns.

There was no urgent business raised.