A five-year-old woman from north London was sent out a ₤ 1,000 penalty after her neighborhood council asserted she had actually been captured fly-tipping.
Harrow Council‘s brand-new enforcement group APCOA sent out a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) resolved to the girl at her home on November 20, which bizarrely asserted that she was “witnessed by a uniformed officer…committing the offence of fly-tipping”.
The girl also got a letter from the council stating it will release court procedures versus her.
Her dad has actually highly rejected that she intentionally fly-tipped, with the neighborhood authority required to state that fining youngsters “is not official council policy”.
The woman’s dad, that wants to continue to be confidential, defined releasing penalties to youngsters as “absurd” and condemned the product packaging winding up on the road on the “over-filled communal bins” at his block of apartments.
He stated: “I am seriously concerned about the financial impact of this fine and it’s causing my daughter undue stress for her age.
“All I want is for this fine to be rescinded, or for there to at least be a clear process for appeals against fines such as this, as there seems to be no due process currently. I hope this injustice can be rectified.”
The dad attempted to appeal the penalty via the council’s internet site yet had a hard time to settle the concern.
After 10 stopped working efforts to input his information, he went to a council guidance session at Harrow Library yet declares he was informed it needed to be reported online or by calling the council straight.
He included: “I sent an email to the specified address but it bounced. I called the council and after a 40-minute wait was put on to someone, who told me that they could do nothing about this and then hung up.”
The five-year-old after that got a last pointer letter resolved to her from the enforcement group on December 5, encouraging her that they were “about to instruct the council’s legal team to start court proceedings” versus her. The letter alerted that a sentence has an optimum charge of ₤ 2,500.
Commenting on the instance, Harrow Council Leader Paul Osborn included: “I’d like to find a child who could afford to pay a £1,000 fine at five years old. Obviously, that is totally unacceptable and we will look into any of those accusations.”
The Local Democracy Reporting Service was later informed the penalty has actually currently been retracted.
An APCOA agent stated: “The Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) resulted from an investigation of waste that had been fly-tipped; the age of the individual was not known. However, the FPN should have been cancelled on appeal.
“APCOA has already contacted the family concerned to apologise and confirm that the FPN has been cancelled. We have also taken steps to avoid a similar situation recurring as this case has not met our usual high standards of service.”
