I was outside London Waterloo railway station and was looking for a bin to dispose of an empty coffee cup.<\/p>\n
The only bin I could see was completely full, but there was a plastic bag containing rubbish at the base.<\/p>\n
I put my cup in that bag and was stopped by an enforcement officer, who had been standing at a distance watching the bin. He told me I had violated the law and refused my offer to remove my cup. He asked for my details, including my passport.<\/p>\n
After printing out a penalty notice, he remained in the same spot watching the overflowing bin. It seemed like a set-up.<\/p>\n
I discovered I had been fined \u00a3500, payable within 28 days and reduced to \u00a3325 if paid within 14 days. There is no right of appeal, and failure to pay could result in prosecution and a \u00a32,500 penalty. Can you advise me?<\/p>\n
CP, Winchester<\/p>\n
I have been reporting \u2013 with mounting alarm \u2013 on the large fines being handed out by councils for littering. Deliberate littering, I accept, is a blight on our streets and is indefensible.<\/p>\n
What concerns me is that, in my view, the penalties are \u2013 in the cases I\u2019ve seen \u2013 disproportionate. Enforcement can be heavy-handed, and councils\u2019 interpretation of what constitutes littering is far wider than what most of us understand it to be.<\/p>\n
One reader was fined for putting a cigarette butt in a refuse sack<\/a>. In March this year, councils were given statutory powers<\/a> to fine what the government called \u201clitter louts\u201d up to \u00a3500 \u2013 and many have opted to apply the full sum. This means a dropped receipt could cost you \u00a380\u00a0in one London street and \u00a3500 in another.<\/p>\n A penalty of \u00a3500 is five times the fine for jumping a red light or for allowing a dog to foul a playground. It\u2019s a sum unaffordable to many people who, nevertheless, have to stump up at speed to avoid it quintupling. And, unlike parking penalties, the only way to contest the fine is to go to court.<\/p>\n The same government guidance states that enforcement action should be proportionate and focused on the worst offenders rather those who have unwittingly littered. It was not unreasonable to assume that a plastic bag beside an overflowing bin (I have seen a photo) was the next-best option for your rubbish before you hurried into a meeting. It is also not unreasonable to expect councils to ensure their own rubbish disposal \u2013 including emptying brimming bins \u2013 is up to scratch.<\/p>\n I asked Lambeth council why people who were evidently unaware they were committing an offence were not given warnings instead of fines. It said that to be \u201cconsistent and fair,\u201d it fined everyone, and it justified imposing the highest allowable penalty as a deterrent.<\/p>\n The south London council reportedly issued the second-highest number of fines<\/a> for littering over a 12-month period. It outsources its enforcement to the parking company APCOA but says the company does not keep any of the revenue raised or receive incentives to issue tickets.<\/p>\n It refused to cancel your fine. If you challenge it in court, you lose the early payment discount. So my advice to you is to pay up through gritted teeth and stick to official bins in future.<\/p>\n Hazardous toys: an updateFive children\u2019s toys on sale in Britain analysed in a Guardian investigation in May were found to contain asbestos. Photograph: Addictive Stock Creatives\/Alamy<\/p>\n Four months ago I bought a selection of children\u2019s toys to be tested for asbestos \u2013 and five came back positive<\/a>. All were removed from sale when I shared the test results with retailers and the Department for Business and Trade\u00a0(DBT). One small retailer issued a recall notice to customers\u00a0within the hour. That was in mid-May.<\/p>\n It took the government\u2019s Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) 47 days to issue a recall notice on its website.<\/p>\n Two weeks after that, and two months after I alerted Amazon, I have received a recall notice from the Amazon marketplace seller, Nico Toys<\/a>, which had sold me one of the contaminated items, telling me to stop using it immediately.<\/p>\n The delay means children could have been playing with a potentially hazardous toy for eight\u00a0weeks.<\/p>\n Four days later came a recall notice for the same toy from Amazon\u2019s product safety team. I\u00a0asked Amazon \u2013 with which I had shared the test results in May \u2013 how it justified such a dangerous delay. It replied that the OPSS had\u00a0prescribed actions for the seller, not Amazon, and that the item had been removed from sale in May.<\/p>\n The DBT, which oversees the OPSS, wrung its hands when I asked what steps it took to ensure customers were contacted immediately.<\/p>\n \u201cOur product safety laws are clear: businesses must ensure the products they sell are safe and are required to act without delay where a safety risk has been identified,\u201d said a spokesperson. \u201cIf they fail to meet their legal obligations, regulators will not hesitate to take action to protect consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n Nico Toys was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com<\/a> or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was outside London Waterloo railway station and was looking for a bin to dispose of an empty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-574286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}