Liverpool Council’s new environmental enforcement team has handed out fewer than twenty penalties in its first year, despite tens of thousands of reports of litter and illegal dumping across the city.
00:00Across Liverpool, complaints about dumped rubbish have surged, but the number of people actually fined remains low.
00:07Between May 2023 and 2024, Liverpool Council logged more than 4,000 street cleaning requests and around 17,000 enquiries linked to fly tipping.
00:18To tackle the issue, the Council launched a new environmental crime enforcement team equipped with geofencing technology and a tiered penalty system.
00:26Yet a written report confirmed that since its creation, the team has issued just 19 penalty charge notices for fly tipping.
00:34Of those 19 fines, 11 have been paid, bringing in a total of £5,350.
00:41Six cases remain outstanding and two have been passed for prosecution.
00:45The figures were released in response to a question at last month's full council meeting from Councillor Joe Dunn, who asked how enforcement was progressing.
00:54The data shows the highest number of fly tipping reports, more than 1,000, came from Kensington and Fairfield.
01:02Seven of the city's 10 most affected areas actually saw reports fall.
01:06In Anfield, incidents dropped by 17% from 700 to 582, but in the city centre, cases rose by nearly 10% to 578.
01:16The Council also confirmed it will not set enforcement targets for its external contractor, waste investigation support and enforcement known as WISE,
01:26which now operates citywide, tackling litter, fly tipping and dog fouling.
01:31Cabinet Member for Communities and Neighbourhoods Councillor Laura Robertson Collins said enforcement isn't about catching out people who make honest mistakes,
01:40but about penalising those who deliberately mess up Liverpool streets.
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