LETTER: You can be fined for dropping a cigarette end

I can confirm Pendle Council does class cigarette ends as litter, and we are taking action. Like other forms of litter, it is an offence to drop cigarette ends on the floor and something for which our Environmental Crime Team has the power to issue fixed penalty notices. These carry fines of £75 each, which must be payable within 21 days. If they are not paid, the perpetrator will be taken to court where they face a higher fine.

The Environmental Crime Team visits town centres as part of their regular patrols of the whole borough.

Since last September, the team has issued six fixed penalty notices for the littering of cigarette ends in Nelson town centre alone.

But we’d much rather people didn’t drop their litter in the first place. There really is no excuse for smokers to drop their cigarette ends when our town centres all have plenty of rubbish bins, many of which are fitted with plates for the stubbing out of cigarettes. Some even have separate cigarette butt bins.

We’ve worked with landlords of Pendle pubs to help educate their patrons on the penalties for discarding cigarette ends.

Posters in the pubs themselves and in other prominent town centre buildings have warned smokers they could pick up a fine for dropping their cigarette ends.

So please, “Concerned Nelsoner”, be reassured we won’t tolerate this type of littering and are already tackling it.

BRYAN THOMPSON

Operational Services

Pendle Council