FPN for flytipping. Anything I can do?

Manxman_in_exile

nav400 said:

I share a room on a high road with no option of recycling. The only option we have is using the purple bags which we don't have because our landlord doesn't supply them. He never explained the rules to me and he has been unreachable since I moved in. It was an honest mistake as I didn't know the rules and they're very unclear, even on the council's website ...

Why can't you recycle?

The website does seem a bit confusing about waste collection and recycling - it's certainly less clear than my own council's website.

It seems to be saying that there are weekly collections of both rubbish and recycling from "flats", but if you live in a "flat above a shop" it only seems to cover rubbish collections from communal bins - and that rubbish has to be in purple sacks that you can get from the council.  No mention of recycling for "flats above shops" that I can see.

I'd be complaining to the council and ask them what people in flats above shops are supposed to do if you have no recycling facilities.  Surely they want to encourage people to recycle and not make it more difficult?  But doublecheck the website first to make sure that the information isn't there before complaining about it being missing.  (I wouldn't be surprised if the same rules apply as to other flats - but they haven't made it clear.  At least I can't see it.)

I don't know what you do about the fine.  I'd be a bit reluctant to pay it in your* circumstances, but I suspect you may have no choice other than to pay.  You could always pay and then raise a formal complaint with the council.  If they reject it take it to the local government ombudsman.  Little hope of success but it'll cost you nothing.

*  Your circumstances being that you are a recent resident in the UK and Hounslow, there are no recycling facilities and the council's website is unclear how to recycle from "flats above shops".  If you are new to the UK you need to understand that people not managing their recycling and rubbish correctly is something that really annoys people very quickly and can make you very unpopular (it certainly annoys me!).  But to do it properly you need to know what the rules are.  Therefore the council needs to make the rules clear.

nav400

Manxman_in_exile said:

Why can't you recycle?

The website does seem a bit confusing about waste collection and recycling - it's certainly less clear than my own council's website.

It seems to be saying that there are weekly collections of both rubbish and recycling from "flats", but if you live in a "flat above a shop" it only seems to cover rubbish collections from communal bins - and that rubbish has to be in purple sacks that you can get from the council.  No mention of recycling for "flats above shops" that I can see.

I'd be complaining to the council and ask them what people in flats above shops are supposed to do if you have no recycling facilities.  Surely they want to encourage people to recycle and not make it more difficult?  But doublecheck the website first to make sure that the information isn't there before complaining about it being missing.  (I wouldn't be surprised if the same rules apply as to other flats - but they haven't made it clear.  At least I can't see it.)

I don't know what you do about the fine.  I'd be a bit reluctant to pay it in your* circumstances, but I suspect you may have no choice other than to pay.  You could always pay and then raise a formal complaint with the council.  If they reject it take it to the local government ombudsman.  Little hope of success but it'll cost you nothing.

*  Your circumstances being that you are a recent resident in the UK and Hounslow, there are no recycling facilities and the council's website is unclear how to recycle from "flats above shops".  If you are new to the UK you need to understand that people not managing their recycling and rubbish correctly is something that really annoys people very quickly and can make you very unpopular (it certainly annoys me!).  But to do it properly you need to know what the rules are.  Therefore the council needs to make the rules clear.

Thank you, this is a great answer!

I actually did search the council's website countless times, but, I am sure that we don't have recycling facilities. They even admit on the website that information regarding the rubbish collection for flats above shops is confusing. What made me more certain, is a couple of articles such as this one (apparently I can't add links but you can Google "Hounslow resident continues campaign to get recycling services for flats above shops").

I will keep the formal complaint option in mind, in case I end up not finding any other solution than paying.

Also, I understand why flytipping annoys people (it really annoys me too and I have never thrown anything on the street) and I always make sure to follow the rules. But, in this case, the rules were unclear and I basically had no other choice. The bin was full, I didn't have any purple bags and so I decided to follow what everyone who has been living there for months is doing. I now see how that wasn't a good decision.

Alderbank

nav400, I am sorry you have not had a very positive welcome to living in the UK.

I suggest you contact one of your local councillors...
https://democraticservices.hounslow.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
...and explain your issue.
Part of their role is to assist residents of the borough to deal with the Council. I think they will help you in your unusual circumstances.

Manxman_in_exile

I'm not sure how far councillors should intervene on behalf of residents when it's already reached this stage.  I can think of many reasons why it might be considered "inappropriate".  

But it certainly can't do any harm to ask for assistance...  (If I were the OP and I had a Green Party councillor I'd particularly target them).

[Edit:  doesn't look as if Hounslow has any Green councillors!]

robatwork

nav400 said:

Hi everyone. Not sure if this is the right place to ask this as it's my first time posting here, please advise where I should repost if I'm in the wrong place.

Nothing related to your exact problem but I get really aggravated at the mishmash of domains in that make this obviously genuine letter look scammy. We have hounslow.gov.uk, kingdom.co.uk, lasupport.co.uk and fpnpayment.com. The main email is to kingdom.co.uk which is obviously a for-profit company not the council.

The phone number to call for help is different to the phone number to pay, which is different from the phone number in the footer, and Help Line should be one word. Correspondence shouldn't be plural. It's not signed.

This was just a rant, no point to it. I'm getting old and increasingly grumpy about the technical and grammatical illiteracy in what purports to be "official" mail. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

robatwork said:

nav400 said:

Hi everyone. Not sure if this is the right place to ask this as it's my first time posting here, please advise where I should repost if I'm in the wrong place.

Nothing related to your exact problem but I get really aggravated at the mishmash of domains in that make this obviously genuine letter look scammy. We have hounslow.gov.uk, kingdom.co.uk, lasupport.co.uk and fpnpayment.com. The main email is to kingdom.co.uk which is obviously a for-profit company not the council.

The phone number to call for help is different to the phone number to pay, which is different from the phone number in the footer, and Help Line should be one word. Correspondence shouldn't be plural. It's not signed.

This was just a rant, no point to it. I'm getting old and increasingly grumpy about the technical and grammatical illiteracy in what purports to be "official" mail. 

This is what you get when councils hire private companies to fleece people. 

The company obviously get a cut of the ticket to cover costs but also profit so it begs the question why the council aren't better off doing this work themselves. The answer appears to be because more tickets are issued, the people handing them out are incentivised to issue as many as possible so you end up with a situation where instead if a deterrent reducing offences which is what should be aimed for (a day with no tickets needing to be issued would be a good thing), the opposite is true and the more tickets that are given the better for the people feeding off the public, the very public the council are paid to preserve the interests of.

The problem for the OP is they have committed the offence, there is a box with their name on it as evidence and the fine in court could end up being higher than £400. It would probably cost the OP more than £400 to pay someone to defend them suitably to apply to the court for leniency and would the court grant any given the OP is guilty? 

The reason the fine is £400 is it's just the right amount to make people pay rather than challenge, if the fine was £1000 I'd bet more people would fight back.

nav400

Alderbank said:

Part of their role is to assist residents of the borough to deal with the Council. I think they will help you in your unusual circumstances.

I will do that, thank you!

robatwork said:

Nothing related to your exact problem but I get really aggravated at the mishmash of domains in that make this obviously genuine letter look scammy. We have hounslow.gov.uk, kingdom.co.uk, lasupport.co.uk and fpnpayment.com. The main email is to kingdom.co.uk which is obviously a for-profit company not the council.

The phone number to call for help is different to the phone number to pay, which is different from the phone number in the footer, and Help Line should be one word. Correspondence shouldn't be plural. It's not signed.

This was just a rant, no point to it. I'm getting old and increasingly grumpy about the technical and grammatical illiteracy in what purports to be "official" mail. 

Those same points are exactly why I thought it was a scam at first. Even my name was misspelled by the way, and the first letter was not capitalized. It was very useless to go to the council but they gave me a small piece of paper with those details on it so at least I made sure that it was legit.

nav400

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

This is what you get when councils hire private companies to fleece people. 

The company obviously get a cut of the ticket to cover costs but also profit so it begs the question why the council aren't better off doing this work themselves. The answer appears to be because more tickets are issued, the people handing them out are incentivised to issue as many as possible so you end up with a situation where instead if a deterrent reducing offences which is what should be aimed for (a day with no tickets needing to be issued would be a good thing), the opposite is true and the more tickets that are given the better for the people feeding off the public, the very public the council are paid to preserve the interests of.

The problem for the OP is they have committed the offence, there is a box with their name on it as evidence and the fine in court could end up being higher than £400. It would probably cost the OP more than £400 to pay someone to defend them suitably to apply to the court for leniency and would the court grant any given the OP is guilty? 

The reason the fine is £400 is it's just the right amount to make people pay rather than challenge, if the fine was £1000 I'd bet more people would fight back.

Just to confirm what you said, I have previously seen an article about that. I can't neither find it nor post a link here but you can search for this Guardian article called "Firm ‘uses aggressive tactics’ to collect millions in fines for councils".