WE'RE used to being busted by Traffic Wardens, it's one of life's inevitable arse-aches.
But now Manchester City Council have given a team of Traffic Wardens the power to hand out even more fines... but this time for littering.
The officers will hand out on the spot fines to litter bugs, and anyone who refuses to pay the £80 bill will face being taken before the courts.
Confidential has made no bones in the past about our frustration with the amount of litter in the city centre.
We've stated how the city was betraying its duty to keep it's face clean and how this failure could potentially hit tourism, investment, city morale and so on and so on.
For a good riling up read here - Mucky MCR: We've Come So Far, This Let's Us Down, and here - Nine Staff Clean City Centre At Night - Rotas Revealed
To give them credit, the council reacted.
In September 2013 they announced a £14.5m city clean-up fund - made possible by a nifty airport dividend.
In December 2013 they released 'gum blasters' onto the city centre streets to jetwash 90,000 square metres of pavement with around 10,000 litres of water.
In March 2014 the council announced they would be offering £200 grants to volunteers willing to help clean the streets.
And in June 2014 they spent £500,000 on 600 new bins for the city centre.
Now the council are set to begin a litter crackdown in and around the city centre with a new team of four specially trained 'litter busting' Traffic Wardens.
Traffic wardens will be dish out £80 fines for littering
The dedicated team will work seven days a week looking out for those who ignore rubbish bins and drop their litter on the ground.
And the council have said that because the four officers are already part of a workforce employed by NSL (the City Council’s parking contractors), the move will cost the council next to nothing.
Another twenty PCSOs have also received additional training and will begin handing out litter enforcement notices in the city centre.
The officers will have the ability to hand out spot fines to litter bugs, and anyone who refuses to pay the £80 bill will face being taken before the courts.
The team will concentrate on well-used parts of the city centre where there have been problems with littering, while larger numbers of the officers will be on duty at busier times, such as around the children's play area on Piccadilly Gardens.
It is a move adopted by council's in both Southampton and Tunbridge Wells in recent years as part of their litter crackdown.
Cllr Bernard Priest, deputy leader of the council, said: “We’ve invested in the city centre by providing these new bins, we’ve communicated with the vast majority of decent people who want to enjoy the city centre and don’t want to see it being used as a rubbish dump – now we’ve got to get tough.
“This crack team have had special training and will get to work looking for those individuals who still think it’s acceptable to drop litter. These litter louts are in the minority but there’s enough of them to have an impact on the city centre, which is very distressing for our residents and the millions of people which visit Manchester every year.
"From now on, anyone who drops litter can expect a tap on the shoulder and an on the spot fine.”
So if you must park on those double yellows, for Christ sake don't drop that Nik Naks packet on the floor.
The fine will be reduced to £50 if paid within the first 10 days.
