EFFORTS needed to be taken to "actively discourage" and enforce against littering across the conurbation.
That was the message from the councillor responsible for BCP Council's regulatory services.
As reported, a private firm tackling flytipping across the area is likely to be extended to include littering.
Councillors have been told there will be no cost to the authority with the potential for around £50,000 income from fines.
Portfolio holder Cllr Bobbie Dove said that the proposal for littering offences would be a fixed penalty of £150, or £75 if paid within 14 days.
She said there was a widely held belief that littering was a low-scale offence but said that it caused real environmental damage with a crisp packet taking 80 years to decompose.
“It is an activity we need to, as an authority, be actively discouraging and enforcing against... it ruins the enjoyment of the area for residents and visitors and costs a considerable amount in time and money to remove,” she said.
Councillors on the place overview and scrutiny committee backed the proposals to cabinet to continue with the existing privately run contractor working on flytipping and flyposting offences until March 2023 and then to extend the service to include littering after a tender process for the contract.
Several councillors commented on the low number of fines compared to the number of investigations for the existing service, which has been operating as a pilot.
Cllr Mike Brooke said that of 2,000 investigations, only 365 fixed penalty notices were issued, of which only two thirds paid up.
“It doesn’t seem cost effective to me,” he said, although welcoming the proposal to extend the service to litter, saying that the town centres of Poole and Bournemouth compared badly for litter over Oxford, where he had recently visited.
Cllr Stephen Bartlett questioned the 384 fines issued to businesses over failure to comply with regulations about the disposal of their commercial waste.
He said the statistics suggested that the businesses were not aware of the regulations which were only now being enforced after a gap of, probably, 20 years.
He said that more work might need to be done to improve awareness of the regulations.
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