Milnshaw: Councillors helps bring more enviromental blight cases to court

Cllr Clare Pritchard, Deputy Leader and today praised Council Enforcement Officers for bringing another two cases of environmental blight to court, where magistrates imposed hefty fines and costs, totalling over £2000. Cllr Pritchard said; “Our Enforcement Teams work hard to identify people who blight our Borough with rubbish and these two prosecutions again show that we will not tolerate this kind of nuisance. We take a hard line on this type of anti-social behaviour and will always take people who dump rubbish in their own back yard, in the alley behind their home, or anywhere else in the Borough to court if necessary.”

Fellow Labour Ward Councillor, and cabinet member for Enviromental Services, Paul Cox added

"These convictions show how seriously we take anybody found to be dumping their refuse, unfortunately we are left with no alternatives but to take this course of action. Action I believe is necessary to send a message that this is not tolerated within Hyndburn"

In one case Andrew Bloomer, (39), of Midland St Accrington, dumped bags of rubbish in the alley behind his property, officers cleaned up the mess, traced the rubbish back to him and served him with a fixed penalty notice. However, Mr Bloomer, who had a previous conviction for a similar offence last year, ignored the notice and letters requesting him to come for interview. This led to him being taken to court where magistrates found him guilty and ordered him to pay £1145 in fines and costs.

 In a separate case, 27 year old Toni Oxton, of Penny House Lane in Accrington, was ordered to pay £1,000 in fines and costs for having more than twenty black refuse bags and lots of scattered waste in her back yard and many more black bags in her garage there too.

Ms Oxton also ignored requests to clean up the mess and the abatement notice which officers served on her. Therefore Council teams again cleared the mess and Ms Oxton was taken to court, where she didn’t turn up and was convicted in her absence of contravening an Abatement notice,  contrary to s 80 (4) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Ms Oxton was fined £200, plus a victim surcharge of £20 and ordered to pay £780 costs, made up of £125 legal costs and £655 investigation and clean-up costs.