“The Council makes no excuses, and this is not the usual standard we expect in progressing such cases.”
Manchester’s Market Street (Image: Manchester Evening News)
An inspired advert by Keep Britain Tidy stars a mallard on a mission. The duck watches as a man on a bench next to a city centre canal screws up his crisp packet and places it into a bin.
But the suited snacker also drops a cigarette and twists his shoe on the butt to put it out. The duck tracks him to his office, then on a bus, as he gets increasingly anxious. Finally he gets home relieved to have shaken off his pursuer. But the front door bell of his house sounds and the bird is standing there outside – the butt next to his webbed feet.
It cleverly makes the valid point that cigarette stubs are litter too.
Manchester City Council are very keen to enforce this fact. But in doing so they made a catastrophic mistake which left an innocent man currently with a criminal record.
Teacher Steve Jones was prosecuted in his absence at a magistrates court for dropping a cigarette butt in Manchester’s Market Street. The offence happened outside H&M on the afternoon of December 14th. But at the time Steve was hundreds of miles away. Also, he is a non-smoker.
Now we can reveal exactly how the debacle happened. It was down to the real culprit giving false information, and then failures by both the city council and the court.
Manchester City Council says it has taken steps to remove the flaws in its procedures which led to the error.
The star of the Keep Britain Tidy advert delivers the butt to the litter bug’s door.
Steve, 53, who lives in Teddington, Greater London, was visiting a funeral director’s in Maidstone Kent, when the offence was supposedly committed.
Despite his pleas to Manchester council that he was the victim of mistaken identity he was prosecuted. Mr Jones was sent a letter demanding £433 for a fine and costs. In July he was sent another letter by the council.
It included a pack of evidence by Manchester city council, including a letter that said: “You have been charged with an offence of dropping litter”, and that a single justice procedure notice had been issued by the local authority in March.
It included a copy of a fixed-penalty notice for £150 for allegedly dropping litter outside the H&M store on Market Street on the afternoon of 14 December last year, which warned that the maximum fine would rise to £2,500 if the case ended up in the magistrates’ court.
The letter gave him 21 days to respond, warning that after that the court would hear the case in his absence, and he may be convicted and fined.
Manchester’s Market Street (Image: Manchester Evening News)
Mr Jones, who has only visited Manchester three times in his life, said: “I know I definitely wasn’t there, because my father-in-law died on December 13th and I was in Maidstone at a funeral directors.”
The address on the fixed penalty notice was in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, and while the birthday on the ticket matched Mr Jones’s the year of birth was 10 years later.
“It’s got the incorrect date of birth, then it’s got a description of me, which says I have ‘hat hair’ which I found quite odd. I don’t know what ‘hat hair’ means, and I don’t really have that much hair, because I don’t have much of it left.”
After he contacted the council again they checked camera evidence and finally realised that he was not the person who had dropped the cigarette. He said: “I don’t want this on my record, especially as I am a teacher too.”
He thought the matter was closed when he received an email form the council apologising for the “administrative error”.
Barrow-in-Furness skyline. The address on the fixed penalty notice was in the Cumbrian town.
But he got another letter dated August 28th saying he had been convicted and fined. “I just find it incredible that I’ve been convicted in my absence. That sounds really serious for me, and I don’t feel confident that they are going to overturn it.”
Now the council has explained in full how the bungle happened. A Manchester City Council spokesperson said: “The Council’s investigations have confirmed that an incorrect address was initially provided to an Enforcement Officer working for our service provider, WISE, while issuing a littering Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN).
“Once this had been discovered, further steps were taken to trace the offender but a discrepancy between the date of birth provided to the officer and that provided in the trace search was overlooked.
“This resulted in an FPN being issued to Mr. Jones by post at his Teddington address in error and, since this remained unpaid, the matter was referred to our Legal Services team for prosecution.
“Following dialogue between Mr. Jones and an officer for the Council’s Legal Services team, the decision was made to withdraw the case. However, whilst the Council contacted the courts to confirm the matter was to be withdrawn, this request was not processed which unfortunately, resulted in Mr Jones being convicted in his absence.
“Whilst this case presented a unique set of circumstances, the Council makes no excuses, and this is not the usual standard we expect in progressing such cases. This matter has been fully reviewed and additional steps introduced into processes to prevent this issue from reccurring. We sincerely apologise to Mr. Jones for the distress and inconvenience caused.”
The council added: “The council is now doing everything in its power to have the conviction set aside at the next available opportunity to avoid any action being taken against Mr Jones to recover the penalty.”