Environmental Offences (Use of Fixed Penalty Receipts) Regulations 2007

I do not quite have two paragraphs, but I shall certainly be briefer than I was the last time. We, too, welcome the order. It encourages local action against issues that blight local communities: street litter, fly-tipping, graffiti, fly-posting and dog dirt. All are anti-social and need constant attention. The regulations are particularly useful in that they engage and enable local authorities in the pursuit of clean neighbourhoods. They give them the opportunity not only to enforce the law on a number of anti-social activities, but to use the receipts of the fixed-penalty system for the further benefit of the community as a whole. However, I question the reasoning behind dividing local authorities into sheep and goats. The virtue of maintaining a clean environment is surely an objective in itself. It does not help to muddle that up with the quality control of local authorities, whether they have CPA star ratings or the designation of quality parish councils. These aspects are irrelevant to a local authority’s need or ability to use fixed-penalty receipts, as it will in what it sees as the community’s interest. It is strange that Defra is discriminating against small parish councils who do not choose to qualify for the designation ““quality””, as well as against other local authorities where use of the opportunities for which the regulations provide could otherwise be a positive way of working towards recovering their star status. This could be joined-up government, but why is Defra doing the dirty work of the Department for Communities and Local Government?