EXCLUSIVE: ‘Environment’ officials stopped a bus to issue a penalty notice to an old man for dropping a fag end, when the man is a non-smoker. Among a growing number of complaints include an old lady fined £150 for harmlessly feeding the birds. But Sutton has still signed a £900,000 contract – and the council gets a slice of the incentivised action.
By DAVE BURTON
Slice of the action: under its new deal with Kingdom, Sutton Council gets 15% of all fines revenue
Residents in Sutton are becoming increasingly angry over the conduct of high street bounty hunters – or “Environmental Enforcement Officers” – whose company has been hired by the council to patrol Sutton High Street, issuing Fixed Penalty Notices for often minor offences.
And, it has been shown, sometimes for no offence whatsoever.
These kerbside coppers would give Mary Poppins a hard time. When they tried to slap a £150 fine on an old aged pensioner for simply feeding the birds, they were later forced to cancel the FPN and apologise.
But the episode is just the latest among a cluster of complaints about the officials, who work for a contractor called Kingdom Local Authority Services. Often, for a quiet life, residents who receive a FPN simply pay the fine rather than face the prospect of battling the bureaucracy of the council. Or worse, court and the risk of fines of thousands of pounds. On occasions, Draconian rules are being used to levy fines against people who often don’t have the money to pay for their next meal.
Feed the birds: the old woman was distressed and in tear when fined by a Kingdom official
The incident with Sutton’s little old bird woman, though, had a third-party witness.
Claire Thomas from Carshalton was in Trinity Square when she saw the Kingdom bogus bobbies approaching the woman.
“The lady was feeding the birds small amounts of food which were eaten quickly,” Thomas told Inside Sutton.
“I saw an enforcement officer lurking near the lady and following her further up the street. When she fed the birds again, the enforcement officer confronted her. It was not nice to witness.
“The elderly lady was scared and getting uptight. She was sobbing. So I asked her if she was alright. She said no, that she’d never done anything wrong before, she felt threatened, and she said she couldn’t afford to pay the £150 fine unless she didn’t eat or pay her bills.
“I advised her to go to Sutton Council and explain her situation.” The woman took the advice and contacted the council, where it was admitted she should not have been fined, and the fine was cancelled. Kingdom apologised and blamed “incorrect training”.
Sutton Council has had a three-year contract with Kingdom, which is coming to the end of its term. Under the arrangement, Kingdom receives all the money gathered in fines, so their staff have an effective incentive to issue as many FPNs as possible, regardless of how trivia the perceived offence might be.
Both Sutton Council and Kingdom say that fines are only issued fairly and for genuine offences. There are no bonuses for more fines, they maintain publicly.
Fines for littering are set at a staggering £150, while fly-tippers are liable for a fine of £400. It makes residents dropping litter appear to be an easy, and lucrative, target.
Whistleblowers who have worked at Kingdom have claimed that some managers at the company encourage these tactics, especially targeting people more likely to pay fines. In the past, councils have sacked Kingdom when their aggressive tactics have attracted complaints.
According to a Kingdom official we approached, his colleagues working in Sutton have been subject to “enhanced” checks under the nationwide DBS system – the Disclosure and Barring Service. Kingdom, though, failed to respond to Inside Sutton questions about its use of DBS for checks, including on whether its employees have criminal records and the nature of their previous offences.
Bounty hunters: Sutton claims there is no incentives for issuing fines
Dressed in uniforms that might appear to be like the police, patrolling our high streets in pairs as if they are police, Kingdom’s staff rarely, if ever, have the training of even the most inexperienced novice copper on the beat. But Kingdom staff do have powers.
A spate of complaints from Sutton residents suggest that Kingdom’s staff training may be lacking when it comes to dealing with the public. Residents also suggest a tendency for one or two of its officers to “see” things that possibly never even happened.
What makes the work of a high street bounty hunter so much easier, though, is that there are no formal grounds for appeal against an FPN. Fixed penalty notices are issued as an alternative to prosecution; paying the penalty discharges liability.
This means that the integrity of the officers issuing the FPNs is extremely important.
Paolo Solazzo is a DSB-checked employee at a Sutton school. On December 7, Solazzo was standing at a bus stop near Sutton Station when an enforcement officer working on his own approached him from behind and accused him of spitting.
“I simply did not do this,” Solazzo says.
‘It feels like the Sutton mafia’
“I work with children, and such behaviour is disgusting. I was upset at the accusation. There was no spit on the ground. It was simply his word against mine. I felt intimidated, threatened and bullied, and the officer was aggressive, but as a responsible person I provided my details and was shocked to be given a £150 fine.
“I will be fighting this absurd penalty for something I simply did not, and would not do.”
Contesting a Kingdom fine is not straightforward. Kingdom get to “mark their own homework”, because appeals have to go through them first. The process, said one resident, “feels like the Sutton mafia”.
They said: “Rather than try and help you, Kingdom just warn you that if you don’t pay you could be taken to court, heavily fined and given a criminal record.”
Inside Sutton has learned of another incident where Kingdom officers tried to hold up a bus in Grove Road in order to issue a fine an elderly man who had boarded. They accused him of dropping a cigarette butt, and told the driver they would call the police if he didn’t stop the bus.
It turned out that the old man accused by Kingdom’s staff is not even a smoker.
Kingdom fined a resident in a flat above shops £400 for fly-tipping when their waste was not collected by the council. The fine was eventually cancelled but a “written warning” issued.
Bogus bobbies: Sutton’s enforcement officers wear police-like uniforms, and usually patrol in pairs to provide witness accounts if anything ever gets to court
Volodymyr Nedashkivskyi was waiting with a friend for a bus in Sutton when someone walked past and spat on bags of rubbish near the bus stop.
A Kingdom officer approached Nedashkivskyi accusing him of spitting. “I’m an honest man and didn’t do anything wrong,” Nedashkivskyi said. “I gave my details to him.” He was issued with a fine, but has submitted a complaint which has yet to be resolved.
Nedashkivskyi has not been impressed with what he has seen of Kingdom staff since, including one incident which he filmed where staff “corner two women and accuse them of dropping a cigarette butt”. The woman accused of dropping a fag end was actually vaping.
When Nedashkivskyi intervened to assist the women as an independent witness, Kingdom’s staff called the police.
Elena Mongiovi was accused by two enforcement officers of littering. She denies this. She felt harassed and so gave her details. “They issued me a ticket saying I was smoking. I do not smoke. I am asthmatic. I rang the council and nothing has been done.”
Jenny Randazzo approached an enforcement officer who she believed was unfairly targeting a vulnerable resident. The Kingdom officer commented on her Italian accent and said, “Go and read an English book”. Randazzo, who is DBS-checked for her work, videoed the encounter.
One man, heading home from the High Street and smoking, noticed he was being followed by a Kingdom officer. As he approached his home, the man turned round and held the still-lit cigarette in the air. “The officer looked embarrassed, and turned round and walked away.” It is one of several incidents where Kingdom staff have been accused of “stalking” smokers.
A group of residents who are concerned about the aggressive tactics used by the Kingdom enforcement officers had a meeting with Citizens Advice Bureau this week. Volodymyr Nedashkivskyi, Paolo Solazzo and Jenny Randazzo were among those attending, together with a representative of the Hong Kong community in Sutton.
Will believe anything: LibDem MP Luke Taylor has been trotting out Kingdom’s own figures
The Hongkongers are concerned that they are being targeted by enforcement officers as potential “soft touches”. Most of the Hong Kong community are in this country on visas, so tend to pay fines even if they believe they are innocent, in case a conviction and criminal record, however unfair or trivial, affects their eligibility for citizenship.
Insiders at the meeting say that Citizens Advice has agreed to help those falsely accused to challenge their fines.
Meanwhile, Sutton and Cheam’s MP Luke Taylor, who is also a member of the Liberal Democrat-run council that hires Kingdom, has admitted “something was going very wrong”.
Taylor held a meeting with Kingdom last week. Inside Sutton understands that also present at the meeting was Christopher Woolmer, another LibDem councillor and the chair of the committee that ratified the Kingdom contract, as well as Barry “Basher” Lewis, the council leader.
Kingdom’s representative at the meeting assured Sutton’s answer to the Three Stooges that its staff are all expertly trained, but undertook that they would “rearrange officers”. So that’s alright then.
Taylor quoted some highly questionable data provided by Kingdom to justify their work, and the rookie MP proffered some statistics that he described as “concrete”.
But almost as soon as Taylor released his statement, Inside Sutton witnessed a group of three Kingdom enforcement officers on Sutton High Street loudly boasting to anyone who would listen how they were now famous on Facebook.
The Kingdom trio included one who has been at the centre of several complaints from members of the public.
When the Kingdom staff were approached by a Sutton councillor, they responded aggressively, even when he showed them his council ID.
Spencer being frank: Sutton’s strategic director for the environment, Spencer Palmer, has handed Kingdom a £900,00 contract
A passer-by who witnessed the gathering row also approached. He was greeted with threatening behaviour from the Kingdom staff, who accused the elderly Asian man of harassing them.
At the Civic Offices, arses are being covered, at speed.
“It will not surprise you to learn that many individuals caught committing an environmental crime will later profess innocence,” was how Spencer Palmer, the council’s “strategic director”, strategic, no less, of environment, fobbed off an official enquiry from a concerned elected councillor about Kingdom’s methods.
Palmer let the cat out of the bag about Kingdom staff pairing up. “Partly so evidence can later be relied on in court as witness accounts,” Palmer wrote to Conservative councillor James McDermott-Hill. Which is probably why Kingdom officials get so shirty when they discover they are being video’d or their actions are witnessed by independent third parties.
Palmer has dismissed “stalking” complaints, and said Kingdom staff were on occasion “required to adopt an assertive tone”.
According to Palmer, 70% of all fines from Kingdom are issued to middle-aged males.
But as one resident told us, “You never see Kingdom officers going after young fit blokes who are 6ft2. They prefer easier targets.”
Sutton’s LibDem council, on Palmer’s recommendation, has recently awarded a £900,000 three-year contract to continue as its enforcement agent. Under the new deal, Sutton will get a slice of the fines revenue – 15%, or around £45,000 each year.
Did someone mention incentives? “This may result in increased scrutiny regarding incentivisation for the council and its contractor to issue more and higher fines in order to maximise income,” said a report to the council’s environment and sustainable transport committee in July.
“Complaints and members’ caseload may increase as more fines will need to be issued to generate sufficient income.”
The little old bird lady should probably be grateful she had a guardian angel looking out for her.
Read more: Sutton council leader denies punching colleague at meeting
Read more: Now ‘Basher’ Lewis knocks out debate on polluting incinerator
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I am the guy that had to complain about the Croydon ‘security’ teams and my son (now 11) still mentions it if we have to visit the town. Would be interesting to know if the Sutton company has staff that do not display their security license also? It is hard but I think that everyone needs to step in as a witness when they see this activity going on – I know it is hard as that is how I ended up on the receiving end of the “bullies in hi-viz” but if enough of us do it then they will know that they are being held to account. If you litter etc then you will be rightly fined as they will be confident even in front of a random witness.
Some time back, I went round to my son and daughter in law’s house to drop them some food. On the step were 2 Enforcement officers issuing them with a fine for not removing their bin from the street to their property quickly enough after it had been emptied. Apparently there is a set length of time to remove your bins after collection. The collection had been very late and my kids were well within the allowed time. To be fair, I spoke to our LibDem councillors who successfully appealed this – but I’m not sure whether they did a blanket cancellation for everyone else in the road who were all in the same boat.
We should have Kingdom working here. In Croydon, people are allowed to let their overflowing bins block the footpath permanently
I was fined for dropping a cigarette that I didn’t drop they followed me to
My house and knocked on the door I’m sure they’re not allowed to do this
They are bullying people 😡
Another good reason not to shop in or visit Sutton for any non-essential reason!
Pigeons are a pest – they spread disease and shit everywhere. If food waste was disposed of properly and foolish people stopped feeding them they’d go elsewhere and become someone else’s problem. Bexley perhaps?