Cheltenham MP to Support Bill Bryson's Litter Campaign

Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood this week hosted a reception in Parliament to launch Stop the Drop, the new campaign against countryside litter and fly-tipping by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. The campaign is being fronted by the charity’s President, the acclaimed novelist Bill Bryson, the author of Notes from a Small Island.

Stop the Drop highlights the growing problems of litter and fly-tipping in England’s countryside. According to the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, the headline statistic on local authority performance on litter fell from ‘satisfactory’ to ‘unsatisfactory’ between 2005/06 and 2006/07. Litter is five times worse than in the 1960s. The problem is particularly acute in rural areas, where litter is often left to lie for much longer than in towns and cities.

Martin Horwood was delighted to be able to support Bill Bryson and the Campaign to Protect Rural England in this important campaign. He said: "Litter and fly-tipping are an unsightly and unnecessary blight on too much of our countryside. I know that my constituents want to see more action from responsible bodies to clean up our towns and countryside. I have also tabled a House of Commons motion backing the campaign.”

Bill Bryson welcomed the support of Cheltenham MP. "We need the backing of as many MPs as possible to persuade people to stop dropping litter, and to prevail on those with the powers to do so to clean it up. Litter is becoming the default condition of the countryside, and it is time that we – all of us – did something about this. The landscape is too lovely to trash,” he commented.

CPRE is highlighting the need for stronger leadership from central Government to tackle litter and fly-tipping, and better enforcement of existing laws by local authorities and others. Keep Britain Tidy’s 2006/07 survey did not rate a single local council as ‘good’ on litter, even though, collectively, councils spend more than £600 million a year clearing litter up – a bill that is ultimately met by taxpayers. Local authorities can hand out fixed penalty notices to people dropping litter, but in 2006/07 just 25 of the 354 English local authorities gave out 62% of the fines, and 72 issued none at all.

There are similar enforcement problems with fly-tipping. Of the 2.6 million incidents dealt with by local authorities in 2006/07, just 1,796 were successfully prosecuted, working out at a roughly one in 1,450 chance of being brought to book.

Bill Bryson said: “Littering is not a crime that has anyone quaking for fear of the consequences because, by and large, there are no consequences. If we want the cleaner, tidier countryside that we all deserve, we need firm action and leadership at both national and local level, to show that dropping litter and fly-tipping will not continue to be consequence-free crimes.”

To find out more about CPRE’s campaign, visit http://www.cpre.org.uk/ . You can also find out what’s going on in your own area, and start picking up litter yourself, by visiting http://www.litteraction.org.uk/ .