£1200 fixed PENALTY for voluntary street cleaning.

Hi, my name is Veronika and my boyfriend is Zoltan.

What happened to us?

We pay attention to our living space. There is a spot in the street where there is usually a lot of garbage around the bins. We have seen rats several times. That is why we and our neighbor, from our street voluntarily cleaned that area several times. We cleaned up others trash. This is not the point where the trash from our street should be taken. Trash bins are brought to this garbage place from two other streets. They have too much waste.

There's a trash bin that doesn't belong to anyone. It is also always filled with their waste. If it doesn't fit, they simply put the waste next to the bins. One day the same thing happened.

My friend took his own cardboard box and collected the waste that was blown away by the wind. He put the box into the "nobody's bin". Someone later threw the box to the ground.

That day or the next day, a lady from the Environmental Crime Unit came. She saw a lot of waste around the bin. Found only one name, my friend's name on the box. So, she took a photo of the box. It had my boyfriend's name and address on it.

A few days later we received a fix fine. £600 per person!

£600 for me

£600 for my boyfriend

They wrote:

"This is being issued to you as you failed in your legal duty to transfer controlled waste to an authorised person. Evidence has been obtained that the items in the picture provided originated from your home address. "

1. We wrote them an email. We tried to explain that my friend was just collecting the trash in the box. Only the box belongs to us, not the real garbage. They wrote the same thing. This is fixed fine and there is our address. The penalty is not canceled or reduced.

2. Then we asked, why Veronika, the girlfriend, who didn't know about this box incident being punished also if only Zoltan's name on it? It was written because the house number is the same. ..and this is a fixed fine...

3. They also wrote:

I quote:

"The allegation is not that you placed the waste at the location, but that you failed in your legal duty when transferring household items.

It is the legal duty of domestic households to ensure the transfer of waste to authorized persons to stop flying

tipping."

So if one of your flatmates drops a letter, addressed to a name and house number and it is found and photographed, then ALL family members and ALL flatmates living at that address will be fined with £600?

IT IS RIDICULOUS!

The "funny" part of it is that in another country where we usually go on vacation, we sacrifice our own time. We volunteer in a local voluntary cleaning team and pick up trash on the street, we try to keep our environment clean.

We were featured in the newspaper and on television and they thanked us for our work.

Here, the "thank you" is that they fine us with £600 and they don't reduce it, they don't delete it, we can't do anything.

Whatever we wrote to them it didn't help.

I went to the citizens advice office. But they also said that I could go to court. They gave me advice, but they said, unfortunately, the law is black and white.

I, Veronika, asked the councillor for help. She promised that she would try to do something in my interest, argued about my case but she said that she couldn't do anything, I could take the case further.

I don't dare to go to court because I'm afraid that I will lose the case and even have to pay the court costs.

Zoltan paid the full fixed fine.

I will pay £100 in monthly installments.

The affected garbage area still looks the same.

The bin was emptied this morning. It stayed that way.

We live in Stoke on Trent. Everywhere I go, I see waste on the street.

Sad part is, I saw a lot of homeless people living on the streets. Nowadays I saw that a homeless couple lives next door to the civic centre. This is their hard work? And the best decision is : those who want to help are punished.

We are still struggling with the waste in the affected area but we have lost our enthusiasm to do something there and we don't know how to clean the waste there anymore.

I would like to add that the other day I saw in the news that someone threw a bag of garbage out of her moving vehicle onto the road and the news said that she was fined a huge sum of £1600. While we collected other people's trash and we got £1200 for that!

ONE REALLY IMPORTANT and USEFUL ADVICE from us:

Always tear off your name and address from the letter or box addressed to you. Pay attention to your roommates or family members, because if they accidentally make a human error, you too face a fine of £600.

And why did I write our story?

Primarily for warning purposes.

The other reason is that I would like to ask for your help. They did not remove the fine from our name and did not even reduce it.

So we ask you that if you also try to do the same for your environment, or if you find this punishment or the amount unfair, please if you can, help us even with a pound.

Every little help counts!

We are very grateful for every single donation!

Share our story!

What happened to us could happen to anyone!

Thank you!

Veronika & Zoltan

About Us:

We like to walk in nature. We also have a separate YouTube channel that shows this lifestyle.

We have shared and talked about it several times that wherever we go we pick up other people's trash, whether in the parking lot or on the beach. We are just trying to reach as many people as possible to keep the environment clean.