Report of the Director of Neighbourhoods

This report provides members with a progress on activities to tackle flytipping.

The Committee considered the report of the Director of Neighbourhoods that provided Members with an update on the activities to tackle fytipping.

The Strategic Lead, Waste, Recycling and Street Cleansing referred to the main points and themes within the report which included: -

·         Providing a description of the teams that deliver the services that discharge the Council’s statutory duties in respect of ensuring flytipping was removed from public land, protecting the environment and ensuring that businesses and residents comply with a range of legislation to ensure that waste was disposed of correctly;

·         A description of the progress to date since the last report to the Committee in October 2018, including case studies;

·         A description of the options for getting rid of waste;

The responsibility of Biffa to respond to reports of fly-tipped waste on public land;

The role of the Biffa Fly-tip Investigation Team and how they work with the Neighbourhood Project Compliance Team to pursue enforcement action;

Performance against Service Level Agreements;

Key flytipping statistics; and

Next steps.

Some of the key points that arose from the Committee’s discussions were: -

·         What was the strategy to prevent flytipping across the whole of the city;

·         Alleyways and passageways needed to be cleaned and weeded in conjunction with the highways department;

·         Who had been involved with Great British Spring Clean and how would this link in with wider environmental campaigns across the city;

·         Did Biffa operatives report incidents of flytipping that were left next to the household bins;

·         Noting the number of prosecutions for flytipping was this satisfactory compared to the number of notices issued;

·         What was being doing to address the increase in ‘scrap man’ advertising;

·         Following discussions with Social Landlords consideration needed to be given as to how they could request bulky waste collections on the Council’s CRM system;

·         The bulky waste collection service needed to be advertised more widely and repeatedly and could a poster be made available to display in communal areas;

·         Residents should still be able to request a bulky waste collection via other means, not just online.  

·         Noting the difficulties experienced in identifying private landowners and the challenges to remove fytipping from canals and rivers;

·         The cost to businesses to dispose of waste at household waste recycling centres and was this counterproductive;

·         CCTV needed to be utilised to identify and prosecute perpetrators of flytipping; and

·         Could statistics be provided on the take up of the bulky waste collection service over the previous 12 months be provided at a ward level.   

The Strategic Lead, Waste, Recycling and Street Cleansing acknowledged the comments expressed regarding the cleaning of alleyways and informed the Committee that Biffa were reviewing their approach to this with a view to improving the service. She said that a pragmatic approach would be adopted and the schedule would be reviewed and this would be shared with Members. She stated that a programme to invest in containers in passage ways would also be delivered this year.

In regard to bulky waste, the Strategic Lead, Waste, Recycling and Street Cleansing confirmed that the data on bulky waste collections for the previous twelve months was available on a ward basis and this would be circulated to Members. She said this service had been widely publicised as part of the apartment block service changes and consideration would be given as to how this could be promoted more widely.  She said that residents could still request a bulky waste collection via other means in addition to online, and she noted the comments regarding the CRM system and the challenges experienced by Social Landlords when requesting bulky waste collections on behalf of their tenants.  She further confirmed that Biffa crews did report incidents of flytipping when this was witnessed on their collection rounds and the appropriate teams would be deployed to remove this. She further advised that the approach to addressing flytipping was consistent across the city.

The Strategic Lead, Waste, Recycling and Street Cleansing acknowledged that delays in removing flytipped waste could be experienced when this occurred on private land, adding that access to remove flytipping could hamper removal. She said that complaints regarding incidents of this type would be dealt with by the local Neighbourhood Teams. She further advised that Keep Britain Tidy had undertaken a piece of research to understand why people flytipped and had provided a number of recommendations that were currently being reviewed and reflected upon. She said that the outcome of this exercise would be reported to the October meeting of the Committee.

In response to the comments regarding the cost to dispose of commercial waste at household recycling centres the Strategic Lead, Waste, Recycling and Street Cleansing stated that commercial operators had a number of options available to them to dispose of their waste and such centres were for domestic waste, not commercial waste.

Responding to the issue of ‘scrap men’ the Strategic Lead, Compliance Enforcement & Community Safety noted that there had been an increase in such services advertised across the city. She said whilst it may appear to residents that this was a simple way to have their bulky items removed it was important to realise that residents were ultimately responsible for the appropriate disposal of any rubbish. She said that residents could be subject to a Household Duty of Care Fine of £400 if the carrier they used to remove and dispose of their waste was not licensed.

The Strategic Lead, Compliance Enforcement and Community Safety stated that the agreed additional investment in 2019/20 to tackle flytipping of £500k would be used to fund additional Enforcement Officers to undertake targeted work and to invest prevention measures, such as investing in CCTV cameras and target hardening projects to design out flytipping hotspots by installing physical measures to deter fly-tippers.

The Keep Manchester Tidy, Project Manager advised the all partners and groups that had taken part in the Keep Britain Tidy Great British Spring Clean had registered via their website so the details of all of these groups had been collected. She said that all of the schools that had taken part would also be surveyed to understand the levels of participation and obtain feedback. She said that to build on the success of this and celebrate the work an event would be held at the Peoples History Museum on 25 June with all of the groups invited to attend. She said this would provide an opportunity to network and establish relationships between various community groups. 

The Executive Member for Neighbourhoods stated that Manchester remained committed to tackling the criminal activity of flytipping and this had been demonstrated by the additional funding that had been allocated to address this. He stated that Manchester took this issue very seriously and would actively investigate and prosecute perpetrators. He advised that Manchester was responsible for 10% of all persecutions nationally, stating that this was an achievement when considering that all cases were subject to the criminal burden of truth test. He further acknowledged the comments made regarding publicising the bulky waste collection service and consideration would be given as to how best to do this to maximise the take up of this offer.

Decision

To note the report.

[Councillor Appleby declared a personal and non prejudicial interest as her partner is employed by Biffa]