News


94% of Maidstone lier fines aimed at smokers


THE vast majority of fines handed out for “littering” in Maidstone have been for dropping cigarette ends, Downs Mail has learnt. Almost 94% of fixed penalty no-


tices (FPNs) have been targeted at smokers discarding butts in the pe- riod April 1, 2016, to March 31, 2017. Atotal of 1,921 ticketswere issued


in that period with the second cate- gory of offence filed under “other litter” with just 78 fines (4%). Food accounted for 23 tickets (1.2%), fouling five (0.26%) and paper 11 (0.6%). Our discoveries come as Maid-


stone Borough Council (MBC) has roundly defended the private con- tractor, Kingdom Security, which carries out its litter enforcement. MBC took 50% of the estimated £153,000 generated from the £80 on- the-spot fines issued in 2016/17 by Kingdom’s operatives. Kingdom denies it pays its staff a


bonus scheme for tickets issued but rather employs a more general “competency allowance” which takes in other factors such as cus- tomer service aswell as the FPNs.


is wrong and there is a moral duty to look very carefully at the terms of this contract because the council is the responsible body. “Unfortunately, we live in a soci-


ety where people just chuck stuff away in away they did not 30 or 40 years ago. “But, in this case, we have to be careful about the terms of engage- ment.”


Kingdomwas suspended on May


MBC has also chosen to back Kingdom, despite a BBC Panorama documentary which clearly set out the case that Kingdom does operate bonus-for-tickets system. Borough councillor Eddie Powell,


who is worried the authority may lose the moral argument over ticket- ing, said: “If there is a public back- lash over this, then it will be the council which will be blamed by the public not Kingdom. “MBC has employed this com-


pany to carry out the work and takes 50 per cent of the ticket money for doing very little. Morally, MBC


16 in thewake of the Panorama pro- gramme’s revelations butwere back on the streets again the following day.


Last October, the Kingdom war-


dens were suspended after one handed out a ticket to a woman feeding ducks in Tovil. An MBC spokesman said King-


dom does offer staff “a competency allowance but it’s not just attached to fixed penalty notices, it’s linked to other things as well.” She added: “The competency allowance is exer- cised here...how they are conducting themselves is rigorously policed by ourselves.We expect them to en- force fairly and transparently.”


downsmail.co.uk How you reacted to


BBC documentary THIS is how our Facebook followers reacted to the news of the Panorama expose. Readers were outraged how Kingdom Security – which carries out the borough council's litter enforce- ment policy – appeared to focus on soft targets for on the spot fines. The BBC inves- tigation also re- vealed that its operatives get in- centives for dish- ing out penalty notices.


This is a taste of the comments on


our Facebook site: Michelle Hook: "There are not enough bins provided for litter or cig- arette ends in the Maidstone area, they could use the money fromjust one fine to provide a bin, but they want the money fromfines." Laura Daynes: "I now see other com- muters warning other people, and less of these wardens hanging around as a result, win, win!!" Ade Rowswell: "After they fined one of our employees for CLEARING litter from the front of our building & with- out providing a shred of evidence. I am very glad to read this." Carolyn Morgan: "Brilliant news. One of them tried to finemy husband for dropping a cigarette end and he doesn't even smoke." www.facebook.com/downsmailnews


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