Litter enforcement company say dog fouling is 'council's problem'

A company employed by a local council to enforce fines for littering has said dog fouling is the 'council's problem', a councillor has claimed.

WISE (Waste Investigations Support and Enforcement), began a year-long trial period with Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council in August 2021, but initial data on their activities attracted criticism.

Councillors said the statistics seemed to be heavily weighted towards enforcing fines on the dropping of cigarette butts, while the more serious issue of dog fouling went relatively unpunished.

At a council meeting in September 2021, Cllr John McAuley suggested the company were going for an 'easy hit' by targetting the dropping of cigarette butts.

At last week's Environment Services Committee Meeting, he told the Council that an applicant who had been interviewed by WISE had informed him the emphasis on cigarette butts was a tactic they used.

“An applicant for a job with these people has come forward to raise that during the application process, at interview, that he was informed his full focus would be on cigarette butts,” he told the Committee.

“Whenever he questioned this, and asked about litter and dog fouling, the response that he got was 'that's council's problem'.

“I think it just confirms what we've been saying this last number of months; that they're there to make as much money as easily as possible.

“They're actually not helping the litter situation within the Borough as we would want it to go. It would be in our interests to look at bringing it back in house and see where we are at.

“It would give us a degree of control over the behaviour of the enforcement officers,” he added.

Statistics presented to the Committee for December showed that 67 (87%) of the 77 fines handed out were for the offences of 'littering cigarette butt' or 'littering roll-up cigarette'.

Just two (3%) of fines were for dog fouling.

Cllr Richard Holmes said the contract with WISE hadn't worked out as the Council had hoped, but that it was important the trial was allowed time to be completed.

“We did say we'd give it a trial for a year,” he said.

“Council had less fines in a year than WISE had in their first few days or so; there were only a handful of fines from Council.

“We haven't really resourced this before. We have people nominally in charge of this who work office hours, and then we expect them to pick up dog fouling at 7 o'clock the next morning.

“If we are going to bring it in-house, we need to look at a model to have people who go out and enforce this; they can't be doing something else.

“Look at what we've done for the last few decades; that's how we do it in-house, and it hasn't worked.

Council officers agreed to bring back a report to the next Committee meeting on the statistics.

Derry Now contacted WISE for a response, but none was received.

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