Environmental Crime

Improving Quality of Life

The Safer and Stronger Communities Fund (SSCF) was introduced for all Local Authorities in England in April 2005. The Fund brings together a number of funding streams aimed at tackling crime, anti-social behaviour and drugs, empowering communities, and improving the condition of streets and public spaces.

The vision is for a cleaner, greener and safer place that works with and through local communities to achieve real and sustainable change improving the quality of life.

The vision can be achieved by building respect and reducing anti-social behaviour, reducing drug misuse, making public open spaces safer through tackling arson, litter and road safety.

The Vale Royal Community Safety Partnership has taken note of the ‘Safer and Stronger’ agenda and has already formed a project team to tackle ‘Environmental Crime’.

Environmental crime has a huge impact on our communities and on how happy we are in them. It plays a key part in building public confidence. It can ruin public spaces and is expensive to clean up.

Environmental crime can include:

Fly-tipping – the illegal dumping of household or commercial rubbish in private or communal areas. Whether it's an old sofa or mattress, or drums of chemicals that are dumped, it's a serious offence.
Littering - deliberately dropping litter on the streets. Leaving litter in a public place is an offence with a maximum penalty of £2500.
Graffiti - spray-painting or otherwise marking private property or communal areas like the sides of bus-shelters and houses. An offence under the Criminal Damage Act of 1971, which costs councils thousands of pounds to remove.
Fly-posting – displaying unauthorised notices on walls and street furniture. An offence under the Criminal Damage Act of 1971, which costs councils thousands of pounds for removal of flyposting.
Abandoned vehicles – often left at the road side or on car parks and burned out. The number of abandoned vehicles in Cheshire, and in the country as a whole, is on the increase due to the fact that the days of dumping your old car at the scrap metal merchants have disappeared and it now costs to dispose of vehicles.
Vandalism – minor damage of private property or communal facilities like telephone boxes or play-ground equipment

The Government have put in place measures including: giving local authorities more power - to take action against fly-tippers, and vandals by restricting sale of spray paint - it's an offence for retailers to sell spray paint to anyone under the age of 16

Vale Royal’s Environment Initiative

During the summer Vale Royal Borough Council launched a campaign called SMYLE (Supporting MY Local Environment). This is designed to encourage residents, businesses and visitors to support the concept of ‘Cleaner, Greener, Streets and Spaces’.

A part of the campaign is to tackle ‘Environmental Crime’ and through an extensive publicity campaign the Borough Council will raise awareness of environmental crimes. They will also use new powers available to them under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act to target and prosecute the minority who believe that acts such as littering, dog fouling and fly tipping are acceptable forms of behaviour.

So what can you do?

Don’t drop litter – use bins provided or take it home	Support and participate in community clean-up campaigns and litter picks
Don’t fly-tip, cause graffiti, fly-post or abandon vehicles	Identify and report neighbourhood ‘grotspots’
Follow the Borough Council’s policy on waste disposal and re-cycling	Report environmental crimes – i.e. abandoned /nuisance vehicles, fly-tipping, fly-posting and noise nuisance
Keep noise within acceptable levels	Act as the ‘eyes and ears’ of your community and inform the Council of environmental offenders.