A woman has been slapped with a £100 fine for walking her Welsh Springer Spaniel in Northampton town centre without carrying a waste bag.
Paula recounted her encounter with a council officer who stopped her during the brief walk, even though her dog had not soiled the pavement. The penalty was issued because she didn’t have a plastic bag at hand.
“My dog had already done her business earlier that day, and since it was just a short walk through town, I was confident she wouldn’t need to go,” Paula explained.
“It was unusual for me not to have any bags in my pockets, but unfortunately, I couldn’t prove I had one. As a result, I was fined on the spot—£100 for a mess that didn’t happen,” she expressed.
Paula acknowledged her awareness of the obligation to clean up after dogs but was unaware of the requirement to carry bags at all times.
“I genuinely expected a warning or some advice about the rules for the future, but they were unwavering,” she mentioned.
The baffling fine comes after a woman was slapped with a £150 penalty by council officers in Richmond, west London, after pouring the remnants of her coffee down the drain.
Paula (pictured) said she was stopped by a council officer in Northampton town centre and fined for not carrying a waste bag
Paula, who asked not to share her surname, described the enforcement officer as ‘polite, but very firm,’ and felt she ‘was an easy target’.
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 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 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.
Burcu Yesilyurt (pictured) was slapped with a £150 fine by council officers after pouring the remnants of her coffee down the drain
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 that 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 Birmingham, 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 he 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 said 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.’
