Response A1345599

Response to request for information

Response date

26 August 2021

Request

At a meeting of Rushcliffe Borough Council's Community Scrutiny Group held on Thursday 22 July 2021 (and reported in the local press) a review of the first six months or so of the Waste Investigations Support & Enforcement Ltd (WISE) private waste enforcement trial was discussed and results were presented.

From the published information it appears that in the period the contract has been running 1590 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPN) were issued of which 1216 had been paid. This leaves 374 Fixed Penalty Notices unpaid.

Excluding the Fixed Penalty Notices issued and unpaid in the months of June and July please confirm:

• that all unpaid Notices for the months of January to May inclusive have been actioned in line with Council's Enforcement Policy namely all necessary Final Warning Letters have been issued?
• How many of the unpaid notices remaining unpaid 7 days after the issuance of the Final Warning Letter have been referred for prosecution at a Magistrates Court?
• Of those how many successful prosecutions have resulted?

Response

The contractor refers cases to the Council weekly we have had the first referral in June.

I can confirm there were 91 outstanding for this period. See the tables below

We have received 49 covering this period for action by the Council’s legal services.

Action by Legal Services

LBA is a letter before action

SJP is a Single Justice Procedure notice/case file (e.g. prosecution case file)

Closed cases are those that have paid on the LBA or the details have proved false.

• LBA issued = 40
• Number of open cases = 33
• Number of closed cases = 16
  • Received = 49
• SJP issued = 23

Final warning letters are issued by the contractor and extra time can be agreed with the individual where they contact WISE.

From Issue Date 01 January 2021, To Issue Date 31 May 2021

• FPN issued = 1229
• Cancelled = 78
• FPN issued after cancellation = 1151
• FPN paid (3 refunds) = 949
• Payment due = 91
• Written off = 112
• Written off + paid = 1
• Refund payments = 3