Under the current law, Local councils can only issue fixed penalty notices for littering when authorised council employees witness the litter being left on the ground.

Consequently,  infrastructure, telecommunications and utility companies employees and contractors are able to leave litter without any penalty. Examples of the litter they leave includes plastic wire sheath, plastic cable ties, fibre optic cables, wire, screws, washers, light emitting diodes, metal hexagonal keys. This litter is typically left on the pavement in front of the companies' street cabinets. It is too fine to be picked up by street cleansing machines.  The litter is just brushed further along the pavement where some of it such as sharp wire or screws can injure people, their pets, wildlife and puncture mobility scooter and bicycle tyres

Eventually, the litter will end up in road gulley drains. Some of these drain locally direct into and pollute rivers and the sea . Other gulley drains flow into  waste water processing plants. Unless the litter is filtered out there, it can also end up in and pollute local rivers, the sea or even farm land via the transfer of waste water treatment works sludge fertiliser to farm land.

Only these companies employees and contractors leave this type of litter. As well as being a criminal offence, it is anti social, disrespectful to our communities and damaging to our local environments, rivers and seas.

The law should be changed so that local councils can issue fixed penalty notices, without actually seeing the litter being left, to infrastructure, telecommunications and utility companies. The fixed penalty notices will be an incentive to these companies to implement anti littering, anti pollution compliance policies and procedures. It will also help to keep healthy our local environments, rivers and seas.

We need to protect our natural environment, especially now.