Private Land

Our experience is that fly tipping on private land is often misunderstood by members of the public.  We think that Mediaklik can help.

Traditionally they have written or phoned the local authority to report fly tipping, and have been frustrated when nothing seems to happen.

Of course the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act does give local authorities powers to require owners of land to clean up fly tipping on their land, but it is often a more drawn out process than members of the public appreciate.  The guidance sets out what local authorities can do in more detail:

The Environment Agency and local authorities will be able to serve a notice on a landowner requiring him to clear fly-tipped waste from his land. Notices can be served on a landowner if there is no occupier, or the occupier cannot be found without the authority incurring unreasonable expense. Notices can also be served where the owner is not the occupier if the authority has served a notice on the occupier but either he has failed to comply with the requirement or the notice has been quashed. An owner or occupier has grounds for appeal against a requirement to remove or deal with waste under section 59 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 if he can satisfy the court that he neither deposited nor knowingly caused nor knowingly permitted the deposit of the waste.

The Environment Agency and local authorities have previously been able to serve a notice requiring the removal of the waste on the occupier of land where fly-tipping occurred. The occupier could appeal against a notice if he neither deposited nor knowingly caused nor knowingly permitted the deposit of the waste. However, no notice could be served on culpable land owners where there was no occupier. [more]

Its also often the case that enforcement resources are stretched  making it possible for sites like the one in the photo to become overrun.

While Mediaklik can’t magic away the fly tip what it can do is help explain what the process is to members of the public which use the service.

Because there is the facility to send back text or email messages to anyone who reports an issue the authority can keep them up to date on the progress in finding out who owns the land and what action is being taken to get them to clean up their land.

The Use of Community Art Projects and Murals as a Means of Controlling Graffiti

The Graffiti Hotline website have the results of an interesting survey on how people see attempts to co-opt graffiti art as a way of controling illegal graffiti.

From my reading of their findings I thought that there isn’t that much public acceptance of mural art or the community art projects that try to work alongside young people who are interested in graffiti art.

However, as a journey the survey seems to have changed the outlook of the author of the report:

At the start of this survey I stated that after 15 years of combating graffiti I was biased and that my views placed me firmly in the ‘all graffiti is bad’ camp. To my surprise, after this piece of research, I now find myself in the ‘most graffiti is bad, but it could be good’ camp.

I have been amazed at what some can achieve with a spray can. It seems that by allowing time to create a piece of work then the quality of the finished work increases dramatically.

(via Cllr Bob Piper)

Litter

I see that the LGA are endorsing the use of “shock tactics” to show members of the public their impact on litter. They are suggesting that some councils might stop picking up litter for a defined period to show just how much we drop, and point out:

People in England drop 30 million tonnes of litter every year, that’s enough rubbish to fill 1,500 aircraft carriers.

It costs local authorities £663 million a year to clear up this rubbish.