For Bucks Sake: Anti-littering campaign

I know – it’s a controversial headline and it’s not palatable to everyone.

However; at Buckinghamshire Council we are going all out to tackle the scourge of roadside littering and we want people to sit up, take notice and be aware of our new anti-littering campaign and zero-tolerance policy. That’s why we’ve gone for a bold, ‘in your face’ tagline. We want this to be direct and hard-hitting, just like the policy behind it.

This is our new drive to clamp down on litter louts who chuck waste out of their cars instead of taking it home.

We adopted a new policy on littering at the start of the summer backed by a high-profile campaign – ‘For Bucks’ Sake’ - to publicise it. We have raised fines to £500 and are appealing to motorists to send us their dashcam footage if they capture anyone throwing litter from a vehicle. If the fine isn’t paid within 28 days, it will double to £1,000.

Under our tougher approach we are also going to be using civil enforcement powers to penalise the registered keeper of a vehicle that litter is thrown from, rather than needing to identify the individual who dropped the rubbish. This makes it easier to secure a positive result as you don’t need to be the one who dropped the litter to have to pay the consequences. It means drivers have a responsibility to tell their passengers to take their waste home – or they could be issued a £500 fine.

I make no apology for taking a really hard line on this. Enough is enough. We see the same types of waste chucked out of moving vehicles along roads; fast food waste, vape and cigarette packets, bottles, cans, crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers. It costs Buckinghamshire tax-payers £3.5 million every year to clear up litter and on busy routes, and causes disruption with lane-closures which are needed to keep our workers safe whilst they clean up other peoples’ mess.

We now have a new section on our Fix My Street webpages to upload dashcam footage of offenders. I must stress; any footage must be captured both safely and legally. I recognise not everyone is comfortable with this but again, I make no apology. A softly, softly approach will not stop people doing this. If people know they could be caught on film in any place, at any time, it might make them think twice before throwing litter out of their car window.

As, I hope, will the prospect of a £500 fine.

We’re seeing some early results as our campaign rolls out with an increase in dashcam footage of littering coming into us. We’ve already prosecuted people under criminal law using dashcam footage and now those people are being fined up to £500.

These higher fines now apply to all littering offences. Smokers in particular should be aware that if they drop a cigarette butt it could land them a £500 fine; they need to make sure cigarettes are fully extinguished then safely dispose of them in a bin; some smokers are using portable ashtrays until they get to a bin which you may wish to consider if you smoke.

This approach is bold and not universally popular, but to reclaim our roadside verges, villages and town centres, we have had no choice but to take robust action.

I hope people take this on board and stop littering.

Martin Tett,

Leader, Buckinghamshire Council.