Litter Stasi try to fine mum £75 – for ‘shaking stone out of her shoe’
A WOMAN who shook her shoe out on the street was followed and threatened with a £75 fine by so-called council litter-Stasi, it emerged yesterday.
The mother, who had two children with her, was approached by an officer from a controversial private firm contracted to tackle litter louts.
She refused to accept the fine or hand over her details but was pursued by the warden – who threatened her with police action – for ten minutes until she took sanctuary in a friend’s house. No fixed penalty was eventually issued.
The encounter was witnessed and secretly filmed by a journalist accompanying the officer as part of an investigation for ITV Wales last month. The reporter, who works for ITV Wales’ Welsh language current affairs programme, Y Byd ar Bedwar (‘The World On Four’), said: ‘The lady just took her shoe off and emptied it. It could have been anything, a stone, a leaf. I didn’t see it as being fair. We were in a car following her, watching her and she didn’t know we were doing that. I didn’t feel comfortable with that.’
Kingdom, which has operated a year-long litter patrol pilot for Anglesey Council since May, has been blasted for using heavyhanded tactics in issuing fines. The firm, which pockets up to half of each fine, has repeatedly denied operating a bonus culture. But the reporter claimed she was told on several occasions that she was expected to issue at least four fines a day in order for the company to ‘break even’.
In the film, shown on Welsh language channel S4C last night, the officer and journalist can be heard talking about the woman, who was seen taking off her shoe and shaking something out of it, while they were sat in a car nearby.
The officer claims the ‘litter’ was insoles and issues the woman with a fine. The woman protests that she ‘hasn’t done anything’, before the warden demands she accept the £75 fixed penalty. She adds that she ‘will have to call the police’ and warns the woman that she could face a £2,500 fine for littering, plus another £ 1,000 for ‘obstruction’ in court. Only when the woman enters her friend’s property does the warden give up.
Labour MP for Anglesey Albert Owen told the show: ‘The fact that they are willing to follow people to their homes and challenge them the whole way: it’s certainly something we don’t want to see on the streets of Britain, north Wales and definitely not on Anglesey.’
Former Kingdom employee Declan Johnson, of Ruthin, North Wales, told the programme: ‘They (Kingdom) want to make a lot of money, that’s it really. We were told that we had to get this target of four tickets a day and there was pressure on us.’
A spokesman for Anglesey Council said its contract with Kingdom would end in May ‘ by mutual agreement’. ‘Without a doubt the trial period with the company has been a success and the partnership with Kingdom has lifted the profile of our ongoing work to keep the streets of Anglesey clean,’ a spokesman said.
Fines were only issued when ‘proportionate and appropriate’.
In a letter, the company, which has contracts with at least 32 councils and makes more than £2million profit a year, told ITV: ‘To ensure a direct benefit to the taxpayer, it is correct that there is an expectation that an amount of fines need to be issued to make the project viable.’
‘They want to make a lot of money’