Now council snoopers can fine you £110 if you leave empty wheelie bin out longer than 12 hours

By Steve Doughty

Action: Residents in Sunderland are being threatened with fines if they leave their wheelie bins out

Families have been told they must take their wheelie bins off the streets within hours of the binmen visiting – or they will pay a £110 fine.

The warning is the latest draconian punishment in a long list of fines already handed out to households for breaking bin rules.

Until now bin police have targeted families mainly for putting their bins out too soon before dustcarts arrive, for overfilling their bins so that the lids cannot be shut, or for leaving out extra bags of rubbish alongside them.

But Durham County Council has declared that households now have only 12 hours to take their bins back off the street after they have been emptied. Failure to do so will be met with a £110 fine.

The council says it has imposed the measure because thieves steal wheelie bins left on the street, and vandals start fires in them.

Its decree was distributed by leaflet to households in the Dawdon area as part of what a council spokesman described as a ‘pilot’ scheme.

The measure was met with fury from local residents, ministers and campaigners opposing restrictive rubbish rules.

Resident Robert Blair said: ‘We have got people working 12 hours a day and then they go shopping and they might go for some entertainment and it’s over 12 hours before they get back home.

Local Government Minister Bob Neill said: ‘This is the legacy of Labour’s bin bureaucrats.’

It is totally disgraceful and disproportionate that clipboard-wielding officials are hammering hardworking families who leave their bins out with bigger fines than shoplifters. ‘We will be setting out plans shortly to rein in town hall bin snoopers and end this crazy practice.’

Doretta Cocks, of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections, said: ‘Wheelie bin fires are entirely the fault of the council. The council has the right to say what kind of containers people put their rubbish out in – if they end up having to impose these fines, it is their system that is failing.’

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Bill Bard says:

More Big Brother Bin men  Enforced by the typical “little Hitlers” who thrive on being Bastards.

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