Public order to tackle rubbish and antisocial behaviour in two Cliftonville streets comes into force

Paladin bins in Athelstan and Ethelbert Roads

A Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) on Athelstan and Ethelbert Roads in Cliftonville aimed at tackling littering and antisocial behaviour has been approved.

The PSPO came into effect yesterday (January 27) and will run for three years. It aims to reduce the amount of litter and rubbish on these streets, as well as address other anti-social behaviour (ASB) including noise nuisance.

The new rules apply to anyone in Athelstan and Ethelbert Roads. Explanatory signs will be installed and enforcement officers have the authority to give Fixed Penalty Notices to those breaching the order.

The PSPO means:

  • Residents must put their household rubbish in the correct bin.
  • Residents must put out their bins on the correct collection day.
  • Residents must not leave bins out on the street apart from on collection day. This means putting out bins between 6pm on the day before collection is due, and taking them back onto their property no later than 8pm on collection day.
  • Residents must not dump or leave waste or litter on driveways, in gardens or other outdoor spaces.
  • Residents must make sure that garden walls and fences are safe and in good condition.
  • Residents must not make noise at any time that is likely to disturb their neighbours.

Members of the public will not be able to use the alleyway between Athelstan Road and Ethelbert Road as the council is to install lockable gates at each end. Residents, guests, emergency services and certain other authorised people will still be able to use the alleyway.

Cllr George Kup, Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Youth Engagement, said: “Reducing the amount of litter and anti-social behaviour in Thanet is a top priority for our residents, and therefore for the council.

“Unfortunately, despite numerous interventions and ongoing enforcement activity, the dumping of rubbish by some residents and people living elsewhere continues to be a real problem on Athelstan and Ethelbert Roads in particular. It can have a detrimental effect on the people who live and work there, and on the visual appeal of the neighbourhood.

“The PSPO is part of a wider project being led by the Thanet Multi-agency Task Force. By introducing the PSPO in Athelstan and Ethelbert Roads, council officers and partners including Kent Police will now have the authority to enforce the new rules, helping to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour in the area.

“We’re hoping that a community-wide commitment to improving the area will benefit everyone who lives and works there.”

The PSPO follows many years of campaigning for measures by Athelstan Road Tenants & Residents’ Association (ARTRA) with input from ward councillors.

The order was agreed at a council Cabinet meeting on Thursday (January 26).

The possibility of the scheme being extended to other areas, particularly alleyways that are a dumping hotspot, was raised by Green councillor Tricia Austin and Labour’s Heather Keen.

PSPOs

A public spaces protection order is an order made by the Local Authority if it is satisfied on reasonable grounds that two conditions are met. These are:

That activities being carried out within a public place have had detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality or it is likely they will.

That the effect, or likely effect, of these activities is, or is likely to be, of a persistent or continuing nature, such as to make the activities unreasonable.

The orders identify public places and prohibit specific things from being done in that area or require specific things to be done in that area for a maximum of 3 years.

Breach of the order would constitute a criminal offence.

Full details of the PSPO are available on the TDC website.

21 Comments

  1. It reality its a goer but excess domestic waste and/or others that fill the local receptacles till the lid wont close.They don’t care They cant be fined.
    So much waste fly tipping locally happens down my manor tdc collect flytipping early morning before locals get up. Nothing to c here.
    Why has tdc not got involved with fixmystreet.com its an independent reporting company for fly tipping and more.

    • Wow. Someone actually complaining that waste is being collected! Possibly because TDC already know it’s an issue in the area? Why would TDC use another platform when it’s easy to report fly-tipping on their website? Male Karen.

    • TDC used to use Fix My Street for residents reporting matters easily rather than try using the TDC tool which often is not working correctly or waiting ages on the phone trying to get an answer. But around 18 months ago they suddenly stopped using the FMS charity.
      Now KCC have also stopped using FMS so you have to attempt to get through directly with them as well. Don’t bother using FMS anymore as nothing will be sent. It must be all a guise to stop incident reports coming through !

    • As I said when it was going to consultation it is totally unworkable, unenforceable & open to abuse-as we saw with the corrupt company TDC hired to enforce liter issues & for years were making up incidents that didn’t happen & the enforcers were themselves filmed dropping litter.

      The fence thing/wall is total nonsense-if the Council want them to be secure for whatever reason, then surely they should be fixing them?

      The worst one is the litter in gardens. It blows into gardens all the time-so as I said previously people could be fined for something that is not their fault.

      The most ridiculous one is the incredibly vague making noise at any time that could disturb their neighbours-so potentially what wouldn’t annoy a neighbour one side such as some DIY in the daytime could be reported by the other side by a serial complainer/misery guts type.

      None of these things are enforceable in court. Just another huge waste of money, when what they should be doing is using CCTV to catch those dumping electrical equipment etc & targeting the residents who genuinely make life a misery for others with loud music, anti-social behaviour etc.

      Instead it looks like just another get more money for TDC scheme, by accusing people of putting things in the wrong bin via snoopers-even if somebody else dropped it in there on bin day, or chucked some rubbish in their garden late at night on the way home from the pub & then fine them.

  2. They really should have included dalby square , as soon as the weather gets warmer there will be the evening gatherings, music thats played a bit too loud for too long , litter and raised voices. None of which would be a problem is it were just an occasional thing, but it becomes nearly daily in summer and at times means those in the square can’t leave windows open and enjoy a quiet evening.

    • You mean the local community, are using the community square, to be a big community? Why would you take issue with that, Lc? Do you prefer to live an insular, curtain twitching life or something?

  3. Once people get use to living with rubbish around them all the time . It will become difficult to educate them to keep the place tidy and clean. And having to walk to the bin seems to be hard work to some. Central folkestone has this same problem. I think its worse than thanet

  4. Why on earth just those two streets? What about the rest of Cliftonville West? There is the same goings on in most of the other roads as well that this will not make a lot of difference at all. Do these Councillors ever walk the streets of Cliftonville ? I guess not !

    • Basically because these two streets are especially problematic, over the last 30 years or so they’ve become the areas of housing “of last resort” properties bought and operated by landlords that have specialised in dealing with societies least desirable tenants ( often not in themselves bad people but they have lifestyles and behaviours that are hardly mainstream, most average people wouldn’t want them as neighbours) and the roads have turned into a sort of sink estate for those nobody else wants to house. It was these two roads that were the real target of selective licensing but the wider scheme was chosen for the revenues it produced, yet despite 10 years of action under the scheme , the margate task force , multi agency interventions , the two roads refuse to improve, given the actions taken and the anti landlord stance from the council etc it has to be accepted that many of the problems are closely linked to the mix of residents , basically there are too many of the wrong sort of people and poor behaviour becomes normalised. This was never a problem as the roads were allowed to live as they wanted and people just avoided them. Then some of the properties were bought by incomers who soon realised why the house they’d bought in the cheapest road in the cheapest ward in the cheapest part of margate which in turn is the cheapest part of east kent etc etc, was so cheap. They have been vocal and better organised than the council at flagging up issues , but their insistence on ignoring the behaviour of their neighbours has meant little progress has been made.
      It’s no coincidence that the road has had more issues with poor housing , rubbish, bad driving , drugs , prostitution, antisocial behaviour , it’s a whole other world to the one normal folk live in.
      I know a landlord who felt he could turn one of the buildings around , bought it and spent 3 years and endless amounts of cash and time trying to run it properly , at the end of that time they’d realised that those flats were the most resource intensive 4 fold than any of their other properties and sold it.
      TDC won’t deal with problem properties where an absent freeholder and leaseconditions mean that individual landlords cannot be held responsible for direpair to the buildings structure, they won’t deal with noise and asb complaints, can’t force residents to follow societal norms.
      They have though bought and refurbished property in the street which along with the new owner occupiers has started a bit of gentrification. It now needs the police to start dealing with the drugs, prostitution and criminal element and assist the immigration authorities in moving those with dubious immigration status out .The roads need rebalancing by attracting new more responsible people to live there. But of course that leaves the problem of where the existing residents go and who deals with them in their new homes.
      A problem thats been decades in the making and will take similar amounts of time to put right.
      https://quizlet.com/gb/599521371/margate-changing-places-flash-cards/
      https://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/ieIssueDetails.aspx?IId=19839&Opt=3
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-19797342

      • Really detailed & informative post Lc. But just for a bit of balance – very nice house near us, in a very nice road. Those who own this immaculate property routinely take carrier bags full of their household rubbish to bins on local streets, stuffing them full / leaving the bags on the pavement if bins are already full. My other half politely asked them not to do it and got short shrift. Unfortunately I don’t think this type of behaviour is particularly unusual. (I think they may also be responsible for occasionally ‘parking’ old white goods etc. by said bins).

        • Yep there’s good and bad behaviour everywhere, in your case one households choices haven’t turned the area into a sink estate, but if 50% of those around you did it the area would soon go down hill, it’s all a matter of balance, plus you’ve challenged their benaviour and to a degree this will hold things in check, cliftonville has had no such curtailment of such behaviours and so its fallen apart.
          Mark Pearsons work was refreshingly honest , he did another report which i cannot find that had some startling statistics for the area.
          This report however is again pretty honest, margate is the second case study. However TDC have chosen to cherry pick the areas issues , dealing with only those has achieved little.
          https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Turning-the-Tide.pdf

          The area has been done no favours by the authorities not wanting to stigmatise various sections of the area by not publicising what goes on ( the prostituting of children in Arthur Road in the early 2000’s being the standout example) yet are happy to stigmatise all landlords for the behaviour ( and inability of TDC to deal with them) of a minority.

          Social housing in the area is disproportionately involved in asb and crime , but you won’t hear that instead they rely on overall numbers rather than relative to pin the blame on the private sector. Huge amounts of crime reports in cliftonville were linked to care homes ( Mable with dementia claims natman stole her teeth in the night , home has to report the claim to the police, the area had a lot of care homes in the past these alone distorted crime report numbers as they did in respect of ambulance call outs and the fire brigade ( usually in response to stuck lifts or fire alarms) figures all used to denigrate the private rented sector in the run up to selective licensing. The dishonesty and manipulation of numbers was beyond belief, and after 10 years little changed in reality. The reduction in many of the indicators was more because of the closure of care homes and the council no longer placing many in need of emergency housing in the area whilst the scheme ran. Paramount the councils provider of emergency housing wouldn’t operate properties in the area.
          There was the infamous ( now demolished) Leslie Hotel, but when the council finally closed it they then used the Glenwood in Edgar Road ( caused endless problems for local residents instantly) for a time for emergency housing until they did a deal with paramount.

  5. It does make you wonder .With all the extra houses being built . The council tax generated why are there not more road cleaners out and about. I worked in Garlinge recently Tuesdays was recycling day the rubbish left lying around as they left. They need a cleaning team behind them. Garlinge sports pitches council put more bins around the pitches tins and bottles all around the touch lines.

  6. So residents (e.g. tenants of exploitative landlords) will now be responsible for making sure the front wall of a property they don’t own is in a good condition otherwise they will be fined? If landlords want to make huge amounts of money from asset inflation they should also make sure those properties are maintained properly. Passing this responsibility and cost onto tenants is a disgrace.

  7. No, the tenants won’t be made liable for such a thing, at best they’ll be expected to have reported any issues to the landlord. Nothing more.

    • You may well be right but that’s not what the article says: ‘Residents must make sure that garden walls and fences are safe and in good condition’.
      The resident is the person living there, not the owner.

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