{"id":253161,"date":"2025-10-26T18:30:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T18:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/253161\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T18:30:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T18:30:14","slug":"on-patrol-with-a-litter-enforcer-to-see-what-they-really-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/253161\/","title":{"rendered":"On patrol with a litter enforcer to see what they really do"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a crisp autumn morning, and I\u2019m loitering outside Earls Court Tube station in London, hoping that someone will litter in front of me. Beside me is Giri Manedalli, a street enforcement officer from Kensington and Chelsea (K&C) council, whose job is to patrol the borough, issuing warnings and fines to those who commit offences.<\/p>\n

Manedalli is a tall, gentle man, who wears the blue K&C jacket with a certain pride. Our eyes are glued on the bin by the Tube entrance \u2014 perhaps someone will chuck a cigarette butt at it and miss, giving us the chance to pounce? But no, after 15 minutes, nobody has sinned.<\/p>\n

This might, Manedalli concedes, be because he is wearing his uniform, or because we are staring at the bin. I\u2019m disappointed, but Manedalli isn\u2019t: \u201cMy job is to minimise offences,\u201d he says. \u201cSo if they don\u2019t happen because people can see me standing here, I\u2019m doing my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until last week, I had no idea there was such a thing as a street enforcement officer, whose job is to deal with problems such as flytipping, aggressive begging and antisocial behaviour. Then the news broke that Burcu Yesilyurt<\/a>, who lives in Kew, southwest London, had been issued a fine outside Richmond station for pouring the remnants of a cup of coffee down a drain. She\u2019d decided it would be safer than carrying the partially filled (reusable) cup on to the bus and potentially spilling it.<\/p>\n

She was confronted by three officers who gave her the \u00a3150 fine, citing Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which makes it an offence to deposit or dispose of waste in a way likely to pollute land or water. <\/p>\n

As the outcry against the fine grew, however, the council cancelled it, acknowledging that Yesilyurt would probably have been successful in appealing the fine.<\/p>\n

\"Burcu<\/p>\n

Manedalli looks bemused when I bring up the Yesilyurt affair; perhaps even a little hurt that members of his profession have been brought into disrepute. \u201cIt\u2019s silly,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s OK to pour coffee down the drain. It\u2019s just coffee and water, it\u2019s not chemicals or oil or anything bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

I point out that there must be a line somewhere, even with something as innocuous as coffee. If, say, someone drove up in a petrol tanker full of coffee, and began emptying it down the drain, would he let them off? He looks a little troubled. \u201cIf it was a business pouring that amount of coffee away, I\u2019d be asking questions,\u201d he concedes.<\/p>\n

Hashi Mohamed, a planning and environment barrister<\/a> at Landmark Chambers, tells me that the fine should \u201cnever have been issued\u201d by Richmond council\u2019s employees. \u201cUltimately, a cup of coffee going down the drains is much less likely to contaminate our watercourses than water companies, which are polluting our watercourses with sewage,\u201d he points out.<\/p>\n

Some worry that cash-strapped councils are increasingly turning to fixed penalty fines to fund their services. K&C alone has 23 street enforcement officers: as Manedalli points out, if the team didn\u2019t make economic sense, it wouldn\u2019t exist. <\/p>\n

\"Giri<\/p>\n

Giri Manedalli inspects cable boxes on the streets of Kensington<\/p>\n

TOBY SHEPHEARD FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES<\/p>\n

As we patrol the swanky streets around Earls Court \u2014 Manedalli takes 11,000 steps a day while on duty \u2014 there are annoyingly few examples of the problems he typically tackles \u2014 but then we notice a plywood board, leaning louchely against a wall, and Manedalli kicks into gear. He pulls on a pair of plastic gloves and checks the board for a name or address that might offer clues as to who left it there illegally. There are none. Undeterred, he gets out a big sticker, peels it off its pad with relish, and sticks it on the board. From there, it will be picked up by a member of the refuse collection team. <\/p>\n

E-bikes are a growing part of Manedalli\u2019s work, he tells me as we move on: when he sees a Lime bike parked in the middle of a pavement, for instance, he alerts the company, which then has two hours to take action. The biggest fine Manedalli can issue is \u00a31,000 for fly-tipping, which drops to \u00a3500 if paid within 14 days; the smallest is for idling car engines, \u00a320<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A broken bicycle was issued with a removal notice<\/p>\n

TOBY SHEPHEARD FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES<\/p>\n

Data on how much money councils make from fines issued for environmental offences is hard to come by. But it\u2019s clearly a significant operation at K&C, whose team has responded to more than 16,000 requests for assistance this year with problems such as abandoned vehicles and bikes, and fly-tipped mattresses and sofas. It\u2019s also issued more than 1,300 fines for littering, many of them on the spot. <\/p>\n

Manedalli says he doesn\u2019t get a cut from any fines he hands out. And in general, he says, fines are a last resort \u2014 those who haven\u2019t offended before are simply \u201ceducated\u201d about where the law stands. <\/p>\n

What do people say when he catches them? \u201cSometimes they\u2019ll say \u2018You don\u2019t have anything else to do with your life,\u2019\u201d he says, looking rather sad. \u201cOr they might swear.\u201d<\/p>\n

He wears a stab vest and a body camera, but has never been attacked: the key, he says, is to be \u201cgentle and respectful\u201d, as people respond in kind. And in spite of the resentment of the people he confronts, \u201cI love my job,\u201d he says. \u201cI get to deal with different people every day. And I get to do investigative work, too, like when there\u2019s an address on something that\u2019s been fly-tipped. It\u2019s not a murder case, I know, but it\u2019s still interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a crisp autumn morning, and I\u2019m loitering outside Earls Court Tube station in London, hoping that someone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-253161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}