Waste - You and the Law

Adur and Worthing Council Services have a small team of Compliance Officers dedicated to ensuring that residents, visitors and local businesses are aware of their legal obligations with respect to waste management and other environmental issues such as abandoning a vehicle, fly-posting, graffiti and littering.  The team make regular inspection visits and attend reported incidents to solve problems both pro-actively and reactively.  These website pages are intended to explain how the law affects you in respect of environmental issues, whether you live, work or visit Adur District or Worthing. 

Litter

Litter has a wide definition and is generally assumed to be discarded material associated with smoking, eating and drinking, or waste that has been scattered about from business or waste management operations.  Litter could include items such as cigarette ends, discarded takeaways and their wrappings, chewing gum, sweet wrappers, crisp packets, drink bottles and cans, drugs related litter and any other item (big or small).

The Environmental Protection Act 1990 (section 87) states that if a person drops, throws, deposits or leaves anything in a place, they commit a littering offence.  Enforcement of littering offences rests with Worthing Borough Council and Adur District Council in their respective areas.  If you see an incident of littering, please report it to help@aws.gov.uk.  You will be asked to provide as many details of the incident as possible.  In order for any enforcement action to be taken you must be prepared to act as a witness if necessary.  The Council has the ability to deal with most cases by issuing a fixed penalty notice (current rate £75) but prosecution may be necessary if the perpetrator does not accept the fixed penalty notice or fails to pay within the specified time of fourteen days. 

As well as individual acts of littering, the Council also has powers to deal with areas that are persistently littered.  These may include, but are not restricted to, areas around fast food outlets, supermarkets, petrol stations, banks with ATM machines or areas where smokers congregate outside public houses or businesses.  If you come across a location that is constantly defaced by litter, please refer it to help@aws.gov.uk. 

Adur and Worthing Council Services operate street cleansing services across both districts.  In most cases streets are inspected fortnightly and cleansing is carried out as necessary.  In some cases, it is not possible to undertake comprehensive street cleansing activities due to the presence of parked cars.  Where this is a problem in Worthing this can be tackled by parking suspensions in partnership with the on-street parking enforcement teams.  Parking will normally be suspended for a couple of hours at a time to enable mechanical sweepers to thoroughly cleanse the gutters and channels.  Where parking is suspended several days notice will be given by means of signage and drivers that leave their cars on site will be subject to parking enforcement.  If you would like to nominate a street for such attention, please contact help@aws.gov.uk.  The street will be inspected and if found to fail national standards will be programmed for special attention as soon as practically possible. Complaints about street cleansing or to identify specific problems please contact help@aws.gov.uk