An 11-year-old boy and his family have been threatened with a £900 fine for leaving a Lego bag filled with cardboard next to a full recycling bin.
Pippa Gibbons, her partner and young son all received letters from Bristol City Council warning them they would be forced to pay hundreds for leaving the rubbish outside the communal recycling bin outside their flats in St Pauls.
The three cardboard boxes were left at the bins outside the family's home in Brigstocke Road after five attempts to recycle them properly and had the name of each member on the packaging.
As a result, two of them were told they faced a £400 fine each, and the other a £100 - totalling £900, Bristol Live reports.
But, after Ms Gibbons fumed to the local authority, Bristol City Council has since retracted the fines and claimed the three letters were sent due to an 'admin error'.
Speaking before the fines were withdrawn, Ms Gibbons said: “I went up and down like a yo-yo for a week, trying to recycle these boxes after tripping over them outside the kids’ room. It’s rare to be able to go down to the recycling place and put anything in there.
“It’s so rarely emptied and it fills up straight away. When we got fined I had tried for five days consecutively to get rid of three cardboard boxes. In the end I got so bored of walking up and down that I put them on top of the bin and that’s what we got fined for.
“They’re not big cardboard boxes, one of them is the size of a shoe box. The shoe box, unfortunately, was addressed to my son who’s 11, so he got fined as well as us.
“I could understand if I dumped a sofa on a picturesque layby somewhere, I get that. Everyday you walk past there is loads of stuff piled up around the bins.
“Most of the housing in St Pauls are multi-occupancy dwellings. It’s so rarely emptied and it fills up straight away.
“I’m absolutely not paying it because we were given no choice. Brigstocke Road is the biggest recycling point in the area but all of them are overflowing."
In the letters sent to Ms Gibbons' family the council stated that the "unlawful deposit of waste" is a "serious criminal matter" which can carry a maximum penalty of £50,000 or up to 12 months imprisonment at magistrates' court, or an unlimited fine and up to five years imprisonment at in a Crown Court.
The family were told they could avoid this by paying £400 within two weeks, or if there was a reasonable explanation for the offence.
In a statement to the council disputing the fines, Ms Gibbons wrote: "The sign at the recycling area doesn’t give any indication or warning of a fine, there are signs to warn you of a fine if you don’t clear up behind your dog, or if you park inappropriately. The sign makes no mention of a substantial fine or gives any notice of this, which is a surprise given the amount.
"If BCC wishes to charge £400 per item not in the bin this should be made much clearer, particularly in an area which traditionally has housed poorer households. The items in the photographs were all in one bag, it is clear that they belong to the same address and it clear that to treat them as individual items is quite disingenuous."
A Bristol City Council spokesperson said: “A failure in our administration system led to three different members of the same household being sent three letters for fly tipping in the same location over a 24 hour period. These letters are not immediate fines but they ask the alleged offender to contact the council to explain why their waste was on the highway.
"They can then opt to pay the specified amount via a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) or can attend an interview conducted in line with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). We have informed the household that we have withdrawn the FPNs and instead issued a warning about fly tipping to one individual within the household.
"We apologise for any distress and inconvenience caused. Environmental crime has a negative impact on our streets and costs the tax payers and the council thousands of pounds.
"The council is working to reduce the amount of fly tipping in the city, which includes placing waste by the side of bins, and we issue FPNs when we identify those who have committed fly tipping after we have investigated the offence. When we have evidence that identifies the person who has allegedly committed fly tipping, we send them letters containing instructions to contact the council to explain why their waste wasn’t disposed of correctly.
"Following this contact a choice is then made by the alleged offender to pay the specified amount via a FPN or attend a PACE interview.”
