Cambridge City councillors have approved a proposal to increase Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) fees for some offences to help reduce the number of environmental offences committed across the city.
The report was presented at last week's Environment and Community Scrutiny Committee.
The increase of FPNs will be for offences relating to littering, flytipping and the breach of the household waste duty of care (which requires householders to dispose of waste correctly).
FPN levels will increase to:
- £225 for littering (currently £150)
- £500 for breach of household waste duty of care (currently £400)
- £500 to £900 for flytipping, depending on the quantity of waste flytipped (currently £400).
These environmental crimes commonly occur across the city – in 2022/23 the council issued 190 FPNs for the aforementioned environmental crimes.
It has also been approved for the council to continue to give a 40% discount to those who pay their fine early. There will also be an extension to the payment time for these offences, increasing the payment period from the existing 14 days to 28 days.
This follows a change in government legislation in July 2023, which gives councils the ability to increase FPNs, so that they can better tackle environmental crime.
Cllr Rosy Moore, Executive Councillor for Climate Action and Environment, said: “We hope that by increasing fixed penalty notices that we will be able to deter those who commit environmental crimes from doing so.
“No matter how small or big the amount of waste, it is important that it is disposed of responsibly and legally. Littering and flytipping make the city look untidy and unkept and is not fair on residents. It poses a risk to our local wildlife and pets plus it means that the council has to spend money to clean it up – money which could be much better spent providing other valuable services to residents at a time when we are all facing cuts to budgets and increasing costs.”
