Environmental Crime - Youth Reparation Scheme

A scheme for dealing with youths that have been witnessed committing environmental crime.

Youth Reparation Scheme

Young people account for a significant amount of litter that is dropped and other minor environmental crime incidents such as graffiti. Litter is particularly an issue around secondary schools and their surrounding areas and around retail and fast food outlets.

Over the years the Council has tried to deal with young people that drop litter and commit minor environmental crimes by issuing warning letters to parents/guardians and by delivering presentations in schools to inform school children about why they should not spoil Doncaster’s environment. In a lot of cases this has proven successful, however there are some young people that continue to spoil the environment.

The Council feels it is important to offer an opportunity to deal with the matter without involving legal proceedings – this opportunity is presented in the form of an offer of a litter picking session. This ensures that the Council is being firm but fair in trying to deal with an issue that attracts complaints to the Council on a regular basis.

If you are under 18 years of age and have been issued with a fixed penalty fine your parents may use the attached form to give their consent for you to attend a litter pick, a copy of this was sent with the original fine.

How the scheme works?

If they are a young person aged 10 or 11, a letter is sent to the parent/carer with information about the offence and they are asked to speak to their child about this.

If they are a young person aged between 12 and 17 years of age, they are issued with a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) for £150 (dog fouling £100). This fine is sent to the offender by post (with a copy going to their parent/carer along with a parental consent form).

Failure to pay this FPN within 35 days will result in a prosecution case being passed to the Magistrates’ Court. However, the FPN will be ‘put on hold’ if the offender agrees to take part in a 3 hour litter pick under the supervision of Doncaster Council staff.

If the offender attends the litter picking session then the FPN will be cancelled and the matter will be closed.

If the offender does not attend, but a satisfactory explanation for their non-attendance is received in writing within 14 days then they will be given one last chance to attend a litter picking session.

If the offender does not attend a session and no explanation for this absence is received then a case will be prepared for prosecution.

Where will the litter picks take place

Litter picking sessions take place on a monthly basis in each of the 5 wider geographical areas (North, South, East, West and Urban) – this means that any young person that is required to attend a session will not have to travel long distances to attend the session and will also be contributing more to their local area by picking up litter in the area where they live.