When I was a 16-year-old, in the late 1980s, another boy stubbed out his cigarette on my steel-toe Doc Martens on Haven Green in Ealing, west London. He belonged to some kind of gang, so there was nothing I could do about it, much as I would have loved to have lodged my new shoe in his gob.
The other week I found myself unexpectedly in the same place, subject to a different but equally searing injustice: I was fined £150 for feeding pigeons. This time, the man meting out injustice was a private enforcer for the local council.
It was a beautiful clear day in February and I was on my way to the airport to catch a flight. I’d stopped off for a Five Guys burger, which I ate basking in the sun and surrounded by expectant pigeons, patiently waiting for handouts. As they pecked at a few welcome chips I’d shared with them, my mind drifted to the past – to memories of being a teenager sitting right at this spot, hanging out in Haven Green with a lovable cast of misfits.
My park reverie, however, did not last long – mere minutes later, a young uniformed man was abruptly informing me that I was in breach of the law. Which law? Because feeding birds is not a crime. Not in itself. Where greedy, cash-strapped councils get you is via the littering laws.
“A person is guilty of an offence if he throws down, drops or otherwise deposits any litter in any place to which this section applies and leaves it,” states section 87 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
Note the words “leaves it”. If the pigeons hadn’t eaten the chips, I could have picked them up, right? But there was no room for negotiation – enforcers are geared to punish point-blank. Having issued a fixed-penalty notice (FPN), he was ready to take payment there and then, with his portable machine.
For its part, Ealing council told me, when I tried to appeal: “Our officers patrol public places in areas where littering is prevalent and are instructed to issue a fixed-penalty notice once they have witnessed a littering act. They have no discretion in this matter and are working to our directions. This ensures they are consistent towards people when issuing a penalty notice.”
“We ask people not to do it because it encourages rats,” Peter Mason, the leader of Ealing council, explained on X, not responding to my request for evidence of the rodent hordes that would take over were they not shielded by FPNs. Indeed, a 2022 report from the civil liberties group the Manifesto Club says there is no evidence that FPNs are resulting in cleaner streets.
Mason also presented pictures of boards on the green that twits like me – who don’t seek out the small print on entering a green space with no perimeter fence – can easily miss.
Ultimately, this is about much more than one fine – it raises questions about our relationship with local government at a time of painful, austerity driven scarcity. With one in five local authorities in England close to insolvency, bailiffs are making record profits as councils seek muscle to recover unpaid debts.
“When costs exceed what councils are able to raise, they have to explore creative solutions to raise revenue, such as traffic fines,” write law experts Eugenio Vaccari and Yseult Marique in the Conversation. “This basically means transferring the local crises on to citizens, who are already struggling under cost of living pressures and record-high taxation levels.”
The Manifesto Club reports that 90% of councils use “incentivised enforcement” – where private companies “receive a percentage of FPN income, meaning that officers are directly incentivised to issue as many penalties as possible”. In 2018, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued the guidance that in “no circumstances should enforcement be considered a means to raise revenue”. That guidance is yet to become law.
In the meantime, I read stories of a man with a weak bladder in Hertfordshire being given an £88 fine for weeing in a motorway layby (it was rescinded on appeal). In September, Harrow council thankfully backed down from issuing an outright ban on the feeding of ducks after residents argued it would be denying them the “simplest of joys”.
Recent analysis by the Guardian confirms 13 years of austerity have taken their toll on councils – and the government’s recent uplift of £600m will not go very far. So, if you want to help out your cash-strapped local authority, treat yourself to some parking fines, go wild peeing and, if you really want to splash out, break bread with pigeons. As Mary Poppins might say: “Feed the councils, tuppence a bag.”
Peyvand Khorsandi is a journalist based in Rome and London
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