Council’s on dog poo case
Dog fouling is firmly on their radar say Stirling Council officials, despite no enforcement action having been taken against offenders for three months.
It was the only area which saw no penalties being issued beetween July 1 and September 30 this year.
This compared with 2980 parking tickets, 23 penalty notices for abandoned vehicles, six dog control notices, nine for littering and six for fly tipping.
At a meeting of the council’s environment and housing committee, Dunblane and Bridge of Allan Tory councillor Alastair Majury said he appreciated there had been some manpower issues within the service recently but sought assurances on what was being done to tackle dog fouling.
Service manager Lorraine MacGillivray said: “It’s a fair point, however it doesn’t reflect the amount of interventions by officers to deal with the issue. We have also made changes to how these interventions have been recorded.
“We are engaging with dog owners and reminding them of their responsibility and have been issuing dog fouling collection bags so there has been a lot more activity taking place despite the fact no formal action has been taken.
“Dog fouling rmains a priority area of work for the team and patrols are undertaken daily by officers, in addition to responding to complaints, to help address the problems that this causes.
“Changes have now been made to ensure as many areas as possible can be patrolled on a regular basis as well as changes to the recording of these and actions taken by officers to allow for more robust reporting of this work will feature in future reports.
“The dog fouling education programme with our local primary schools is now being rollled out following the successful pilot and return of the dog warden to full operational duties and will involved pupils engaging in question and answer sessions with officers and being involved in a poster design project. The winning poster will be used as a generic authority wide poster with the schools able to use this and their own posters.”