Bin fines out of all proportion (From Lancashire Telegraph)

I have lost count of the number of times that this has been explained but I will try again!
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The reason that the fines are so high is because the defendant has ignored the Summons to Court (possibly like the warning letters and Notice that will have been served on these two ladies to try to educate them that....the waste goes in the bin bag, the binbag goes in the wheelie bin and the wheelie bin is left out for the binmen to empty).
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As they have ignored the Court hearing the magistrates ARE INSTRUCTED to presume that the defendants income is £350 per week.
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The fines are then determined as a % of the weekly income (which is why rich people are fined more than poor people for the same offence!). If it is a Band C fine its 150% of the weekly income which means the magistrates HAVE to fine the defendent £525. In addition they will also award full costs to the council this is legal fees+ costs of investigation.
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Now if the ladies in question had bothered to drag themselves out of bed and got to Court for 2pm they could have explained why they have such difficulties in putting thier waste into a bin and told the Magistrates they were on benefits. The weekly income is taken as £100, they would have got a 30% discount for pleading guilty and given their financial circumstances there would have been no order for costs.
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Have you read in todays papers that Sheffield Council have budgeted £400,000 to try to educate people on how to use their bin - £400,000!!!! Now thats criminal! They don't just issue an FPN (which if these ladies had bothered to pay that would have been a £50 fine) there are letters, formal Notices, informal discussions all to try to get slovenly people to accept saome responsibility and USE A BIN!

I fail to see where the council has the right to fine anyone for using the wrong bin. we all pay council tax for this public service and not everybody believes in the great green con. what happened to the rubbish sorters we had before all the green tax con became the easy money target. It would be interesting to know why the council will not recycle anything that does not earn them money? It is not the job of the tax payer to sort different materials for the councils benefit. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog.

mavrick wrote:
I fail to see where the council has the right to fine anyone for using the wrong bin. we all pay council tax for this public service and not everybody believes in the great green con. what happened to the rubbish sorters we had before all the green tax con became the easy money target. It would be interesting to know why the council will not recycle anything that does not earn them money? It is not the job of the tax payer to sort different materials for the councils benefit. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog.

Its thanks to people like you, that the Government and in particular Vince Cable are offering local councils a bounty share of 250 million pound to reintroduce weekly bin collections for all household waste for a short term political point scoring venture.
When the bounty has finished, the increased costs will be passed back to the council tax payers and a big hike in the annual tax charges.
If you cannot see this and the obvious reasons why, it makes me wonder if you do actually pay any council tax!

HelmshoreBoy wrote:

mavrick wrote:
I fail to see where the council has the right to fine anyone for using the wrong bin. we all pay council tax for this public service and not everybody believes in the great green con. what happened to the rubbish sorters we had before all the green tax con became the easy money target. It would be interesting to know why the council will not recycle anything that does not earn them money? It is not the job of the tax payer to sort different materials for the councils benefit. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog.

Its thanks to people like you, that the Government and in particular Vince Cable are offering local councils a bounty share of 250 million pound to reintroduce weekly bin collections for all household waste for a short term political point scoring venture.
When the bounty has finished, the increased costs will be passed back to the council tax payers and a big hike in the annual tax charges.
If you cannot see this and the obvious reasons why, it makes me wonder if you do actually pay any council tax!

I can assure you i do pay council tax, perhaps i may be a little older than you and can remember when the councils had rubbish sorters. I find it a little strange that as soon as councils got involved in the great green con that the price of reclaimed materials in general fell. It is not the councils place to prosecute ratepayers for refusing to sort the rubbish, if they were dumping it illegally that would be a different matter. just for info, vince cable and the tories did not get a clear mandate to govern in their own right. maybe they realise they have been seen for what they are.

Mav, just a point, one of the Darwen women was fined for "just" dumping her rubbish in bin bags in her back alley, so the issue of incorrect use of her wheelie bin does not enter it. She was a fly tipper. That why she was fined a £1,000 and rightly so.

The question of whether to sort or not to sort your rubbish, lies with the individual. Either sort it into the respective recepticles or just put it all in the green non recycling bin. That way it will be full within a week.

At the end of the day, if the recycling strategy keeps the council tax bills down, Im all for it and I'm not even a tree hugger or environmentalist, just someone who cares a little bit to show some concern.

I also remember the pickers and sorters at the tip and also the incinerator on Roman road.

Putting aside the amount of the fine for a minute, there is no doubt about it that many 'able bodied' people just give a monkeys where they put thier rubbish or let their dog poo or leave their wheelie bins permanently in the back, even front streets. Before a person is fined there is a long (too long in my opinion) drawn out procedure which also involves personal contact by council officials on more than one occasion. If people then continue to ignore all attempts to rectify the matter then they deserve to be fined.

Lest people also not forget that for every tonne of waste sent to landfill, the council have to pay a tax of, if I recall correctly, about £50 or so.
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So it is in EVERY council tax payers interest to sort out as much recyclable waste as possible.