A Morecambe councillor has slammed Lancaster City Council after they were named as one of 43 local authorities to issue zero fines in a year for fly-tipping.
County Councillor Charlie Edwards said the council was "letting the environment go to rack and ruin" after new stats showed they'd had 3,736 incidents of fly-tipping reported over 12 months but hadn't given out a single fixed penalty notice.
A league table published by the government's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had Lancaster ranked equal 266th in a table showing the number of fly-tipping fines issued nationwide in 2021/22.
The stats showed the council had taken other enforcement action against fly-tippers 997 times over the 12 months.
A Lancaster City Council spokesperson said they are "committed to reducing the issue of fly-tipping across the district and sees illegally dumped waste as its number one environmental challenge faced".
Waltham Forest in London topped the government's table, having issued 8,212 fines in the same period out of 9,813 incidents.
The total number of fixed penalty notices issued nationwide was 91,000 in 2021/22. There were 43 local authorities in 2021/22 which did not issue any fixed penalty notices, including Lancaster. An additional 76 local authorities issued 10 or fewer fixed penalty notices in 2021/22.
Conservative county councillor Edwards (pictured below), who represents Morecambe South on Lancashire County Council, said the city council had been "named and shamed" for "failing to punish a single fly-tipper that year".
"Lancaster needs to up its game on these basic services," said County Councillor Edwards.
"Can’t get planning permission, can’t get a taxi, can’t go to the town halls, and now, they don’t stop fly-tipping.
"The so-called Greens who (help) run the council should be protecting our environment, not letting it go to rack and ruin."
You can read the league tables here.
The tables cover the reporting period April 2021 to March 2022.
A Lancaster City Council spokesperson said in response to the stats: "In the past 12 months, the city council has teamed up with leading national environmental charity, Keep Britain Tidy, to work together to achieve positive impacts for our communities.
"Schemes and interventions trialled in the last year saw a reduction of incidents in hot spots and this work will feed into future strategies and action plans for tackling this issue.
"It is important to note that enforcement is not the sole answer to tackling the issue and comes in many forms, not just prosecutions. The council use many different methods including formal letters, community protection warnings, fixed penalty notices, and others under the Environmental Protection Act.
"Evidence suggests that education, policy and community cohesion are much more powerful tools in reducing an issue that is a blight on our communities."
The government said it was publishing league tables to "increase transparency of the data on the use of on-the-spot fines, including publishing league tables on fly-tipping to show which local authorities are taking a muscular approach".
Lancaster City Council is run by a coalition cabinet of Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat councillors, following the local elections in May 2023. Previously the cabinet was made up of Labour, Green and independent councillors.
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