Charnwood Borough Council

Our powers only relate to rubbish problems that exist on ‘premises’, which includes privately owned domestic dwellings, industrial or commercial land and any other privately owned land. We are unable to investigate rubbish problems on ‘public’ land such as pavements, roads and roadside verges, and public footpaths and bridleways, which are usually the responsibility of the Council’s Cleansing team (01509 634567) on behalf of Leicestershire County Council. COUNCIL TENANTS are asked in the first instance to contact their Housing Officer, who will carry out the initial investigation into their complaint. Tenancy Services can be contacted on 01509 634567 or via the Council’s web site.

The types of situations that we usually deal with are those involving protracted problems, i.e. where a resident or land owner is unwilling to take the action necessary to deal with the problem, and there is no likelihood of the problem being resolved in the foreseeable future without legal intervention. For example, rubbish left at an empty property, with no indication of when the owner might remove it, could be a matter for Environmental Protection officers depending on the circumstances, and whether or not this is the case depends upon the nature of the rubbish and how it relates to our legal powers under the laws that we enforce.

To explain further, Environmental Protection officers can only take action where the accumulation is either causing harbourage for vermin or is attracting significant numbers of vermin to some premises/land (Prevention of Damage by Pests Act 1949), or where it is causing a statutory nuisance by being prejudicial to health or a nuisance (Environmental Protection Act 1990). ‘Prejudicial to health’ has been held by case law to have the underlying concept of “an accumulation of something that produces a threat to health in the sense of a threat of disease, vermin or the like”. In other words we can deal with an accumulation of rotting food that might attract rats and flies, but not inert matter such as broken glass, sharp metal, and building materials even if this might cause physical injury to any persons who may come into contact with it. The other aspect that would allow us to get involved is if the accumulation constitutes a statutory nuisance, which is a substantial interference with a person’s use and enjoyment of their own property as opposed to something that may be irritating and annoying, but not bad enough to be a legal nuisance. An example of a statutory nuisance might be a pile of garden manure that gives off smells and/or attracted large numbers of flies that causes significant problems to one or more residents on their own properties.

The types of problems that we usually investigate involve,

• Problems for residents caused by odour, flies and vermin related to the keeping of animals, usually dogs and poultry, on a domestic property, usually resulting from poor house-keeping allowing accumulations of faeces and spillages of animal or bird feed.
• Similar problems (odour, flies, vermin) resulting from accumulations of domestic or trade waste, both food and/or inert waste, that have been left for some time without arrangements being made for their proper disposal.
• Overgrown gardens/piles of inert material that are providing shelter for significant numbers of vermin.