PICTURES: Councillors campaign against council's 'lack of enforcement' to clean up filthy Northampton town centre streets

Councillors have taken to the streets of Northampton to campaign against fly-tipping and to call on the council to take action.

Labour councillors in the Castle ward say their area is “filthy” due to excessive fly-tipping which, they claim, is being compounded by a “lack of enforcement” by West Northamptonshire Council (WNC).

Councillors Danielle Stone, Enam Haque, Fartun Ismail and Jamal Alwahabi have been pictured protesting at multiple notorious fly-tipping hotspots in the Castle ward are of the town holding signs which say ‘enough is enough’, ‘where there is muck, there’s rats’, ‘more CCTV = more prosecution’ and more.

Speaking to the Chron, councillor Stone said: “Our strapline is ‘not clean, not green’. That comes directly from WNC’s strapline which is, ‘clean and green’. What we want WNC to do is to live up to its [clean and green] promise. They’re definitely not living up to it.

"I’m phoned nearly every day by residents who are incandescent and who are telling me that everything has deteriorated in the last three years: there’s more fly-tipping, it’s left longer, it reappears far more quickly, it’s much bigger.

“Over the summer the fly-tips have all become rat infested. And it stinks to high heaven. It’s just horrendous. Babies, children, elderly people have to walk by.”

So what’s been going wrong the last three years?

Councillor Stone said: “I think Veolia is sticking too rigidly to the contract. I don’t think they gave the council enough flexibility to change it.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in residents in the town centre. HiMO landlords are tipping their flats and houses out with complete disregard to the impact on the environment.

“Because of the lack of enforcement, I think five shops have stopped their commercial waste contracts and are just putting their stuff out on the street.”

What’s the solution?

Councillor Stone said: “I think we need to put in CCTV because it has been found to be very effective. One of the problems we’ve got in enforcement is finding evidence. If you have CCTV in the hotspots you don’t need to go through the binbags [to find evidence] because it’s on CCTV. There was a pilot project for that in Charles Street and it was found to be really effective.

“So CCTV, more enforcement officers. The other thing that’s gone badly wrong is we only have 14 neighbourhood wardens for the whole of West Northants – we hardly see them in Northampton. I’ve never met my warden. We were, before, used to having a really good relationship with our wardens but that doesn’t happen anymore.

“Neighbourhood wardens...are the kind of join between residents and the council. From my point of view, they are invaluable when they are allowed to work a patch.”

What about the cost?

Councillor Stone said: “When I was costing it for the budget, it was cost neutral, because enforcement action means that you get fees and penalties paid and it covers the cost of what you are doing.”

What does the council say?

In a separate statement, councillor David Smith, WNC’s Cabinet Member for community safety and engagement and regulatory services, said: "Northampton is densely populated, and we have to ask householders to be respectful of their neighbourhoods.

"At West Northants Council we are trying really hard to combat fly-tipping and especially in the hot spots around Northampton. We are working closely with distressed local residents to try and stop repeat offenders fly-tipping in areas like this, and we are not talking just bin bags.

"If left on the street for any length of time, household waste can quickly end up as an unsightly mess being blown around our streets.”