'Flabbergasted' woman fined £400 for flytipping after she put rubbish in a bin

In these days of cash-strapped councils you would think they would be pleased when residents help by picking up rubbish near their homes. But one woman’s good deed left her with a £400 fine when she put rubbish in a bin.

Children's entertainer Olivia Post was exasperated when she saw that foxes had torn open bin bags which had been left on the street for collection.

So she went home and got her binbag and then picked up all the mess before putting the bag in a council bin.

She thought having a clean street was the end of it. But the next day there was a knock on the door and a council official gave her an on the spot £400 fixed penalty notice.

It emerged that foxes and seagulls had pulled the rubbish out again and council workers had gone through it, finding details of her address in Battle, East Sussex, and fined her for flytipping.

She explained what must have happened but was told the small council bin outside her home could only be used for 'litter' and not domestic waste.

Before fining her the official even read her the "Miranda rights" and told her he was recording the exchange.

The row erupted last month, when snow brought council services to a halt and bin collections were not taking place.

By clearing up other people’s broken egg shells and litter from outside her flat, putting it in a waste bag, and leaving it in a council bin, she had reportedly broken section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

There is no option to appeal the fines, according to National Enforcement Solution's website (NES), a private company outsourced by her council. She was told over email that the only thing she could do was to take NES to court.

Two other women in the same block have also been accused of fly-tipping.

First to be fined in the block was Ms Post’s 83 year old neighbour Anne, Lazzara who has been in and out of hospital with pneumonia, and given a £400 fly-tipping bill.

A few weeks later on December 12, Ms Post received her fine, and a week after, on December 19, midwife Helena Truett was also penalised.

Pensioner Anne was given hers when her grandson took the bins out too early in the day, on collection day. He was later told tenants should take their bins out at 6am.

Ms Lazzara said she would "rather go to prison" than pay the fine. The council eventually rescinded it.

However, Ms Truett has not had hers taken away and was reportedly handed her notice without any evidence she had committed the alleged offence, only told she was “witnessed littering”.

The midwife has since received a letter stating she will be taken to court.

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Ms Post says a key issue is that their block backs onto a public car park, and the tenants of the block have no access to actual bins.

They are told to leave their waste in bags outside the front of the block, but seagulls and foxes regularly tear them open.

Ms Post said: “Our rubbish is contained in a plastic bag, and we have foxes and seagulls here that rip the bags open.

“We’re in this constant scenario of having litter and rubbish from all over the place being strewn across the car park.

“During the snow it was particularly bad because nobody came to empty the bins, there was even more litter strewn around that unusual.

“So I went and picked the litter up, took the rubbish bag out of my kitchen, which obviously had some of my waste in.

“It would never have occurred to me that was a problem. It took me quite some time to pick the rubbish up and put it in the rubbish bin.

“The following day I get a knock on my door from this officer who managed to get up the icy pathway, which was quite astonishing to be honest, because we had no water, no shops open, we were literally cut off.

“I was astonished because the one service we got was somebody issuing fines.

“He asked me, “Do you recognise this bag?”

“Of course I said 'yes' and he said 'I’m giving you this fine' and cautioned me - it’s very intimidating.

“He had his camera on and, just like the police, he read me my rights.

“I was flabbergasted, I said 'this isn’t even my rubbish apart from the stuff at the bottom'."

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She added: “I recounted what I’d done, said I’d gone out and picked all this litter up, which was pretty vile litter, and put it in the bin.

“And he said “Well, it’s not in the bin now.”

She added: "I’m really unhappy about flytipping and you can see that by virtue of the fact I am out there cleaning up. I can’t believe it.

“They’ve also said its flytipping if you put something near a bin. If there’s an overflowing bin, surely your approach is to get a bigger bin, not to target people with good intentions trying to put rubbish in it?

“My neighbour is a nurse and she got a fine, and I’m an entertainer and I’ve lost all my work - a £400 fine for anybody is a lot of money.

“Hers is even worse because she was only told she was witnessed doing this, can you imagine the paranoia living in this house, what have we got? The fly tipping spies outside the garden? Just waiting for us to put litter in the bin.”

A Rother District Council spokesperson said: “Enforcement officers can only deal with the situation they come across.

"In this case, rubbish was found on the ground that contained Olivia Post’s name and address, suggesting that the resident had failed to dispose of her waste properly, and she was given an on-the-spot fine.

"We appreciate that there are sometimes circumstances that we are not aware of and, having heard from Ms Post, we will reimburse her for the cost of the penalty notice as a gesture of goodwill.”

When Ms Post did appeal NES rejected it.

National Enforcement Solutions has been approached for comment.