A woman in Northampton has been slapped with a £100 fine for walking her Welsh Springer Spaniel without carrying a dog waste bag.
Paula, the dog’s owner, recounted that she was approached by a council officer in the town center who issued the fine despite her assurance that her dog had not relieved itself on the pavement.
Paula explained that she had forgotten to bring a dog waste bag, as she believed her dog had finished its business earlier and was only taking a brief stroll through the town center.
“I knew she wasn’t going to go again,” Paula stated. “It was just a quick walk, and unusually, I didn’t have a bag in any of my pockets. So, I ended up being fined £100 for something my dog didn’t do.”
‘She’d already been out for her business that day and it was a very short walk through the town centre so I knew that she wasn’t going to do anything,’ Paula said.
‘Unusually, I didn’t have any in any of my pockets, and so I was unable to say that I had a poo bag with me. So what happened? I was fined on the spot, £100 for a poo she didn’t do.’
She added that she knew it was a legal requirement to clean up mess after dogs but not any rule about carrying poo bags.
‘I honestly thought that I would be giving words of advice, told off, told what the law was so that I knew for next time, but there was no movement,’ she said.
Paula, who preferred not to share her surname, described the enforcement officer as being ‘polite, but very firm,’ but felt she was an easy target.
Paula said she was stopped by a council officer in Northampton town centre and fined for not carrying a poo bag (stock image)
A West Northamptonshire Council spokesperson said: ‘It’s really important that if people walk their dogs in a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) area they have the means to pick up after them in case they foul in a public area.’
Established in 2014, PSPOs allow councils to set local rules to tackle community issues.
The council spokesperson said that officers will fine dog owners who do not have a means of cleaning up, as part of PSPO requirements.
Paula was one of hundreds of people who shared their story through Your Voice, Your BBC News after a woman in west London was fined £150 for pouring coffee down a road gully.
Burcu Yesilyurt, from Kew, west London, said she tipped a small amount of the drink from her reusable cup down the road gully because she didn’t want to spill it on the bus.
But moments later, she was ‘shocked’ to see three male enforcement officers ‘chasing’ her down the street as she stood at the bus stop near Richmond station.
The officers fined her £150 under Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, reduced to £100 if she paid within 14 days.
Ms Yesilyurt said she found the encounter ‘quite intimidating’ and was left feeling ‘shaky’ on her way to work.
But Richmond-upon-Thames Council insisted its officers ‘acted professionally and objectively’ and were ‘justified’ in issuing the fine.
The council later said it had cancelled the fine and is ‘reviewing our advice on the disposal of liquids in a public place’.
Also in west London, a woman said she was fined for fly-tipping after an unopened envelope with her name on was found in an alley near her home.
After receiving the council letter, Victoria said she was ‘shaking’ and that she ‘burst into tears’.
She responded to the council letter to say she had never seen the envelope but she still the £400 to avoid the sum rising to £600.
However, she later had the fine cancelled and refunded after contacting her local councillor.
An Ealing Council spokesperson said they had followed the ‘usual process’ of locating the parcel in a fly tip which contained the resident’s details.
However, they added the fine was incorrect and issued an apology to Ms Wells.
In Birmingham, a man said he was given a £100 fine for dropping a strawberry stalk down a roadside drain during the city’s bin strike.
Kleo Papas, 58, who was on a work trip in Birmingam, said he was given a £100 fine for dropping a strawberry stalk down a roadside drain during the city’s bin strike
Kleo Papas, 58, who was on a work trip, could not find a bin when finishing a strawberry so decided to drop it down a drain.
An enforcement officer from the council then approached him, saying he ‘got all that on camera’.
He believed that because it was organic material it was fine to go down the drain, adding that if he had ‘thought that constituted littering, [he] would have just put it in [his] pocket’.
Mr Papas appealed the fine but was unsuccessful and sad he paid the £100 fine, which he felt was excessive.
A Birmingham City Council spokesperson said: ‘We cannot find any record of Mr Papas receiving a FPN for disposing of a strawberry stalk.’
