Harlesden High Street Waste Enforcement

After my blog post of a few days ago, I have serendipitously been sent some figures on the success of a recent trial in the Kensal Green part of Harlesden High Street.  This was the subject of a two week campaign where Council and Veolia staff spent every weekday morning inspecting all dumped rubbish.  The trial covered the High Street on both sides from the Harrow Road entrance into Willesden Junction up to the Jubilee Clock.  The waste was left in the manner I described back in May.

The waste was measured as the number of bags left, and the figures were thus:

                                    Week 1                     Week 2            Total

Legal Trade                   Under 25                 128                  Up to 153
Legal Domestic              697                         577                  1,274
Illegal Trade                   440                         286                   726

Total                               Up to 1,162            991                  Up to 2,153

In the first week officers did not count legal trade waste, as there were so few bags.  In the second week, the number of bags had multiplied several times over suggesting that some businesses that had been dumping waste started to get a better sense of their responsibilities.  At the same time the number of illegal trade dumps went down by 35%.  It is impossible to know how much of this was down to diversion of local trade waste into legal channels, and how much caused by reduced dumping from outside the area.

Scale of Dumping
I found the scale of the illegal dumping quite shocking.  Veolia estimate that legitimate waste amounted to 8.9 tonnes during the whole of this period, compared 6.85 tonnes of illegitimate waste.  That means that more than 40% of the waste the Council taxpayer pays to be disposed of is not his responsibility.

The weight of illegal waste went down by almost a tonne in week two, so that it then accounted for just under 40% of the total waste in week 2.

Prosecutions
The officers have now followed up with enforcement actions.  These include seven fixed penalty notices for littering, two warning letters about flytipping and littering, twelve investigations into flytipping being started,125 investigations into whether businesses have reasonable waste management arrangements, and 34 notices issued to businesses that did not.