A five-year-old girl residing in north London has received a £1,000 penalty and faced threats of court action after being accused of ‘fly-tipping’.
The Environmental Enforcement Team from Harrow Council communicated to the girl’s father that they detected her during the incident.
However, the father contended that his daughter, being just five years old, should not be subjected to such a fine, deeming it ‘absurd’.
Initially, the council dispatched a notice on November 20 indicating that the child was ‘observed by a uniformed officer… committing the offence of fly-tipping’.
It has now been revealed that no officer actually witnessed the event; instead, packaging labeled with the girl’s name was discovered a street away from her residence.
The father, who prefers anonymity to safeguard his child’s identity, stated that the packaging likely ended up there due to the overflowing communal bins in their neighborhood.
The girl’s father conveyed to the Local Democracy Reporting Service LDRS: ‘This Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) was issued to my five-year-old daughter, alerting her that a £1,000 fine must be settled due to a fly-tipping offense she allegedly committed.
‘I am profoundly concerned about the financial ramifications of this fine and the undue anxiety it may impose on my daughter at such a young age.’
Attempts by the father to contest the fine via the council’s website have not yielded any results thus far.
He even attended a council guidance session, but he claims that he was instructed to file the complaint online.
He recounted: ‘I sent an email to the provided address, but it bounced back.
‘After a 40-minute wait on the phone to the council, I finally spoke to someone who stated that they could do nothing about this, and then the line disconnected.’
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The Enforcement Team subsequently dispatched a ‘final reminder’ letter, cautioning that they were ‘about to instruct the council’s legal team to initiate court proceedings’.
The issue of the fine was raised during a council meeting, where Harrow Council leader Cllr Paul Osborn remarked: ‘I would like to find a child who could manage to pay a £1,000 fine at five years of age.’
‘Clearly, that is completely unreasonable, and we will investigate any of these claims.’
Harrow Council has later confirmed that the fine has been annulled.
They stated: ‘The Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) originated from the investigation of waste that had been fly-tipped; the individual’s age was not initially known.
‘Nonetheless, the FPN should have been revoked upon appeal.’
‘APCOA has already reached out to the affected family to apologize and affirm that the FPN has been nullified.’
‘We have also implemented measures to prevent a similar situation from occurring again, as this case did not meet our usual high service standards.’
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