Purpose

To outline proposals that place local communities at the centre of efforts to drive behavioural change, while supporting the volunteers who already make a valuable contribution through litter-picking and environmental improvement activities.

Decision

That

1. A Volunteer Campaign to make more resources available and an online presence to promote the work carried out by volunteers and provide information for those interested in getting involved, be launched.
2. An Anti-Littering Campaign focused on rural communities based around community pride and changing behaviour be launched.
3. Rural Community Days are trialled, working with Parish Councils and local volunteer groups to demonstrate community action in tackling waste crime, use of shared resources and skills and build stronger partnerships.
4. That a vote of thanks be given to the volunteers that give up their time to keep the rural and urban communities free from litter. 

Reasons for the decision

In April 2026, Cllr Trzebinski proposed a motion relating to littering in rural communities, seconded by Cllr Russell. The briefing note included in Appendix 1 was provided for discussion and in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 12.9.3, there being no proposal to refer the matter directly to the Cabinet, the Mayor referred the motion to the relevant Policy Advisory Committee.

The report follows that motion and considers the points raised in the Council meeting and what actions can be taken to further tackle littering in rural communities, including additional support for volunteers delivering community action.

The motion stated:

This council acknowledges that rural communities should benefit from the same level of services as the Town centre and urban areas. It also recognises that many rural roads suffer from an unacceptable excess of litter and some residents are putting themselves into danger by making “ad hoc” litter picks. Fly tipping is also an ongoing problem. In order to equalise the treatment of urban and rural areas the council resolves to:

•  Contact all Rural Parish Councils and request them to identify litter “hotspots” and ask them to assist, where feasible, in the litter picks.

•  Prioritise, produce and publish an annual schedule of litter picks within the Borough for all rural roads.

•  Take advantage of KCC scheduled road closures to supplement the scheduled litter picks.

•  Put more resources, including more mobile CCTV units in “hotspots”, into the apprehension of fly-tippers.

•  Initiate a “Keep the Countryside Litter Free” campaign, particularly targeting schools, but with signage across the Borough.

Following discussion at the Council Meeting, the following minutes were recorded:

During the discussion of the motion, Members commented that fly tipping in the rural areas was a recurring problem in the borough, but the preliminary steps taken so far were a step in the right direction.

Additional comments were made on the need for a full awareness campaign to stop littering, including any further provisions that could be taken to protect the individuals that gave up their time to litter pick.

Members thanked the environmental enforcement team for their hard work and efficiency when fly tipping was reported using the online council tool.

Appendix 1 sets out a summary of the DEFRA’s Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse (COPLAR) which recognises the different land types and uses, and how these impact on the frequency of cleansing and statutory response times.

This Code therefore sets out some disparity between rural and urban areas due to the differing intensity of use. The Council’s current service provision is set up to deliver our statutory duties and therefore more intensive and responsive cleansing is required in urban areas.

Appendix 1 also sets out the work carried out by the Waste Crime Team to tackle fly tipping in rural communities including use of 47 CCTV cameras, drones and campaigns to highlight the successes, so of which have been featured on national media.

Hotspot data also shows many of the littering reports relate to urban and residential areas with Headcorn and Sutton Valence, Staplehurst, Marden and Yalding, Harrietsham, Lenham and North Downs all appearing in the lowest 8 areas for littering report. By contrast High Street, Penenden Heath, Fant and Oakwood and Parkwood and Mangravet all appear at the top of the list with over 80 online litter reports per area in the past 12 months.

Rural areas are recognised as more challenging environments to carry out street cleansing. Whilst intensity of use is lower, littering on high-speed roads quickly accumulates and is difficult to remove safely. Many of these roads have speed limits of 40mph or higher which requires additional traffic management to control vehicle speed and flows. They also rarely have sufficient verge space to allow operatives to maintain a safe distance from the traffic. These roads are also often the key access routes for the community and closures can cause significant disruption to the road network.

The Council already works closely with Kent Highway’s colleagues to work collaboratively on planned closures and gain road space to carry out necessary cleansing. The team also are fully trained to install road closures and traffic management, Unfortunately, many road closures are the result of emergency works with little or no notice and a reluctance to share that road space with other contractors. The challenge in these instances is to know where the closures are happening, connect with the contractor quickly and divert teams from other areas before the road is reopened. Working with the rural communities to make us aware of these sudden closures is essential to allow us the best opportunity to make use of them.

The street cleansing team have dedicated rural teams, however demand for litter bin emptying and peaks in fly tipping unfortunately reduce the opportunity for additional litter picking of rural roads.

The Council also supports 23 volunteer litter picking groups across the Borough including providing equipment, waste removal, insurance and safe working procedure guidance and documentation. In October 2026, the Council is delivering a “Thank you” event at the Town Hall for all volunteers which provides a great opportunity for them to meet other groups and share experiences.

Opportunities

Whilst the Environmental Services Team work hard to deliver above the statutory requirements and to achieve a high-quality environment, there are always opportunities to improve processes, increase resource and achieve better results.

Table 1: Proposals

Opportunity

Financial impact

Environmental Impact

Social Value

1

Volunteer Campaign – Create an online presence to direct volunteers to, social media campaign about getting involved, clear communications relating to MBC support

Can be delivered within budget

Volunteers already have a huge impact on improving the local environment. Championing groups who act as local guardians, report fly tipping, monitor hotspots and organised community clear ups with opportunity to target private land as well

Community engagement and cohesion.

Opportunity to make litter clearance more personal and therefore build expectation of standards within communities i.e. “Marden doesn’t litter”

2

Anti-Litter Campaign – Specific campaign aimed at rural roads to deter littering, highlight the impact on communities and the risk to those clearing it up.

Can be delivered within budget

Target to change behaviour and reduce littering and fly tipping.

Target to make it socially unacceptable to litter. Get communities behind the initiative and look for opportunities to share the campaign through local groups, organisations, businesses etc

3

Create Rural Community Days – joint working approach to target hotspots between MBC street cleansing team, volunteers and Parish Councils. MBC to provide traffic management supported by community volunteers to carry out litter picking

A small number of days could be delivered within existing resource, however, further funding would be required to deliver a comprehensive programme of events

Increased cleansing through greater targeted response making used of wider resources.

Able to tackle wider environmental issues e.g. MBC team can deal with hazardous waste immediately.

Joint approach would enable upskilling for volunteers to work alongside trained staff. Opportunities for staff development. Community wellbeing from physical activity and building relationships within community.

Other opportunities, such as those raised in the original Motion, were explored however they were either already being carried out or for operational reasons were not deliverable. For example, the waste crime team already deploy 47 cameras to littering and fly tipping hotspots and achieve excellent results in terms of fixed penalty notices and decisions to prosecute. Therefore, additional cameras are unlikely to result in a significant increase in enforcement action due to the limitation on resource to operate them and the number of locations that can accommodate CCTV effectively. There is a need to rotate CCTV cameras to reduce likelihood of them being identified and stolen.

One suggestion related to publishing litter picking schedules. This is not recommended as there is a need for the schedules to be fluid and respond to change. Cleansing schedules are seasonal, must respond to weather conditions, will be affected by other demands such as peaks in fly tipping or accidents, KCC’s weed treatment and responding to road closures etc. Therefore, the risk of publishing schedules is that they will create expectations of when cleansing will be carried out. Maidstone operates an inspection-based cleansing regime meaning the amount and type of cleansing is based on need, not purely schedules. This means the schedules are likely to be inaccurate to real-time and will result in high levels of complaints based on when cleansing is expected rather than needed.

Another suggestion related to working with Parish Councils. This is already the case, including their role in coordinating and facilitating volunteer groups in their Parish. The Operations Manager has attended a few Parish meetings to respond to any questions and provide information about the Council’s cleansing services. The Operations Manager remains available to speak to any Parish or Ward Member about hotspots in their area and arrange the necessary cleansing.

A further consideration is whether additional funding would support more direct interventions within rural communities. However, it would require around £100k to create a dedicated rural litter picking team of two operatives and vehicle. The Committee could recommend to Cabinet that this is considered as part of the annual budget setting process for consideration alongside other budgetary pressures. Due to the high cost, this option has not been included in the recommendations of this report.

The report was considered and supported by the Climate Transition, Corporate and Environmental Services Policy Advisory Committee at its meeting on 1 September 2026.

Alternative options considered

Option 2: That some of the proposals set out in Table 1 of the report are agreed. Cabinet should identify which of the proposals they would like to proceed with.  

Option 3: That Cabinet proceed with alternative proposals for tackling litter in rural communities which are not included in the report.

Both of these options were not selected as, the implications of other suggestions had been fully considered and due to the information provided in Appendix 1 of the report, do not reflect the current needs. In addition, it was considered that additional funding to deliver additional cleansing due, would come at a high cost and was not recommended when considered alongside other Council budgetary pressures.

Option 4: That no further action is taken.  

This was not selected as, it was recognised that further work was required to support rural communities tackling waste crime.