Better ways to police our litter?

So the council are thinking of bringing in private “litter police”, at no cost to the council.

The usual suspects for this work are a “controversial” operator called Kingdom Securities”, featured on Panorama a few months ago. Basically, they issue Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNS), with most of the fine going to Kingdom, and a small portion to council. Ex Kingdom employees confirm they have a target of at least four FPNS per day, per employee. That’s 1,000 per year, per employee.

That’s where the problem lies, you have “officers” with targets, a company seeking profits, so they will just go for easy targets, hence why, in every area they operate, over 90% of FPNS are smoking related. Always soft targets, OAPS, the vulnerable, mothers with children, lone youngsters. Easy money. And if you check out You Tube clips, plenty of evidence of intimidating behaviour and lies by the “officers”.

So beware what you wish for, experience elsewhere suggests that Kingdom make nice profits, but make absolutely zero difference to littering levels. Think about it, reduced littering means reduced FPNS, kingdom are paid per FPN, so they are actually incentivised to fail.

As for Victoria Park, all that’s needed is a few temporary wheeled bins for the summer, maybe even one or two just for bottles and cans to boost re-cycling. Or do the council want pictures of litter to justify calling in Kingdom? Incidentally, in Bristol, every single performance indicator relates to revenue or FPNS, not a single mention of litter reduction. Says it all really!