Fined for feeding the ducks and picking up litter. How ‘Stasi-like' councils are ripping off Britain

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While serious criminal behaviour all too often goes unpunished, councils across the country are increasingly issuing fines for misdemeanours as innocuous as putting the bins out early or feeding the ducks.
After one west London man was penalised with a fixed penalty notice (FPN) for putting his bins out early last month – more on which below – the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, warned that local authorities were veering into 'Stasi-like control of people's lives'.
'Instead of cracking down on genuine antisocial behaviour, the state tries to reassert itself by punishing well-meaning people for tiny infringements,' he told The Telegraph. 'It's the easy thing to do but it's counter-productive and unfair.'
Indeed, on-the-spot penalties – condemned by critics as 'busybody fines' – have been rising for years. Data show such fines soared by 42 per cent in the year to 2023, resulting in nearly 20,000 FPNs being dished out, according to research conducted by civil liberties group the Manifesto Club.
Although nominally aimed at cracking down on offences such as loitering and littering (offering local authorities a way to deal with relatively minor transgressions outside of court), the seemingly heavy-handed use of these penalties in a justice system where people convicted of grave crimes are often handed short or suspended sentences seems ever more unjustifiable.
Here are some of the most egregious examples…
Martin Fielder had given up his job to care for his young children after the death of his wife when he was hit with a £500 fine and the threat of a criminal record in February this year.
His misdemeanour? An errant envelope that he suspects flew out of his recycling bin.
After the envelope had been found by a council warden 250ft from his house, Fielder was accused of fly-tipping in a letter sent by District Enforcement, a private contractor of Welwyn Hatfield borough council that issues FPNs on commission. The ensuing back-and-forth with the council, he said, has left him in a state of 'constant anxiety'.
'The letter stated that if the fine was not paid within 28 days, the matter would be referred to the magistrates' court, where I could go to prison for up to 12 months or receive a bigger fine, or both,' Fielder told The Guardian newspaper. Fielder explained that strong winds the night before could have caused the packaging to fly out of his recycling bin, and the company downgraded the charge to a £100 littering fine. He is now deciding whether to challenge the penalty in court.
As in Fielder's case, the administration of FPNs is often outsourced from cash-strapped councils to third-party contractors, prompting critics to suggest the system is used to replenish local authorities' coffers and wide open to exploitation.
Indeed, the Manifesto Club's research indicated that the 39 local authorities which employed private enforcement companies were behind 14,633 of the penalties served in 2023, while 261 councils that did not issued just 4,529 by comparison.
'While councils fire off fixed penalty notices for fly-away envelopes, real criminals are being let off the hook,' says William Yarwood of the TaxPayers' Alliance. 'Taxpayers will be rightly jaded that trivial mishaps are being met with extortionate fines. Councils need to make sure that the private companies they hire don't have skewed incentives that encourage the handing out of fines merely to make a profit.'
In November last year, Harrow council issued a five-year-old girl with a £1,000 FPN that claimed she had been 'witnessed by a uniformed officer… committing the offence of fly-tipping'. What had actually happened, according to the girl's father, was that parcel packaging with her name on it had been found on a neighbouring street due to overfilled communal bins.
The child was then sent a 'final reminder' letter from the local authority's enforcement team the month after, which advised that it was 'about to instruct the council's legal team to start court proceedings'.
Her father branded the fine 'absurd' and, after failing to resolve the issue himself, went to a ward surgery held by his local councillor. The issue was then raised at a council cabinet meeting, after which APCOA, the private contractor used by Harrow council to issue FPNs, apologised and the fine was dropped.
Faye Borg, 82, was in Morden Hall Park, a National Trust property, in August last year when she was fined £150 for feeding the ducks. She was approached by two council wardens, who issued an FPN that said a 'female was seen throwing biscuits' into the River Wandle.
Borg alleges that the two wardens, who worked for Kingdom, a company contracted to provide environmental enforcement services to local authorities, followed her to her doorstep, demanding she 'pay the fine on the spot'.
Merton council subsequently apologised, sent a senior member to Borg's home with flowers, and said it was 'taking this matter up with our contractor to ensure that it does not happen again'.
'These kinds of absurd fines exist only because the companies are being paid per fine,' says Josie Appleton, the founder of the Manifesto Club. 'The Government is reviewing fining for profit, but it's taking far too long to do something about it. So long as wardens are being paid per fine, this is going to happen, no matter how many regulations are in place.'
Hammersmith and Fulham council fined Clyde Strachan £1,000 for 'fly-tipping' in May when he put his bins out a few hours early.
The 37-year-old was going away from his home for a few days, so he put his rubbish and recycling out at midday the day before the refuse was due to be collected.
'I deliberately put them out of the way on the pavement, tucked to one side against the wall so they weren't in anyone's way,' he said. 'It meant I had put them out about six or seven hours before… I would normally take them there.'
When he returned home, however, he was issued with a £1,000 FPN, reduced to £500 if it were paid early. It stated: 'There was one large box, six bags of waste, and one food bin deposited on the pavement and left. It isn't collection day so it shouldn't be there.'
The penalty was cancelled after Strachan appealed. He argued it was 'excessive' given he had made an 'honest mistake'.
Last month, Richard Cameron, 45, was found guilty of four cycling offences for pedalling down Victoria Street in Grimsby town centre, which is subject to a public spaces protection order intended to deal with recurrent antisocial behaviour.
In a press release, North East Lincolnshire council said that Cameron had received four FPNs for 'recurrent cycling offences' but 'had not paid the fines and was therefore summoned to Grimsby magistrates' court'.
It continued: 'Also being prosecuted that day was Viktorija Kosareva, 28, of Smith Square, Doncaster, who was summoned for not paying an FPN she received for walking her dog on Cleethorpes beach when not permitted to do so… Neither individual attended court and both were proven guilty in their absence.'
Cameron was ordered to pay £1,224, consisting of a £660 fine, £264 victim surcharge and costs of £300.
Rubbish dumped on Veronika Mike and Zoltan Pinter's street in Stoke-on-Trent had started to attract rats, so they took matters into their own hands.
The couple said the area had been blighted with 'disgusting' litter for years and 'just wanted it clean', so collected the refuse into an old cardboard box – addressed to Pinter – that he placed by his bins in the hope that it would be taken away by Stoke-on-Trent city council.
'I couldn't put it in the bins because they were full, so I left it beside them,' he said.
A week later, Pinter was issued an FPN for 'an offence of failing to transfer waste to an authorised person', and fined £600. Mike was fined the same, despite her name not appearing on the cardboard box. The couple are paying the penalty in monthly instalments.
When Violet Cooper, 38, arrived to collect Juliet, her lost chow-chow dog, in August last year, she was issued with a notice requiring her to update the microchip details within 21 days (microchipping has been compulsory for pet cats and dogs since April 2016).
Cooper failed to do so, and last month was found guilty at Salisbury magistrates' court of failing to comply with the notice. She was fined £847.59 – a fine of £220, plus £539.59 in costs and an £88 victim surcharge.
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