ANPR camera enforcement Litter pics Louise Parfitt chats to Andrew Kemp, CEO of LitterCam, about a new initiative to help clean up our roads ve lost a lot of hair since I started this project! Andrew Kemp, CEO of LitterCam, is talking about the three-and-a-half years he has spent researching environmental enforcement legislation and developing a solution to help local authorities tackle the problem of littering from vehicles. The product itself a mobile enforcementcamera platform with back-office software wasnt the issue: the complexity came with the regulations on who is allowed to enforce what, where and how. The Littering From Vehicles Outside London (Keepers: Civil Penalties) Regulations 2019 came into force in England on 1 April 2018 (see Parking News, April 2018, pages 34-35). Currently, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales do not have such legislation. Councils in London have been able to take action on this issue since the London Local Authorities Act 2007, but, to Kemps knowledge, none of them do. And, so far, adoption of the powers across England has been limited. From conversations with adjudicators, Kemp believes there have only been two vehicle-littering prosecutions in almost two years. Largely, local authorities that are using the powers are taking a civil enforcement officer approach, Kemp says. But there are obvious challenges with this. They need to be in the right place at the right time, and it is very difficult indeed to capture the information required to meet the burden of proof needed by the adjudicators. I Parental influence Kemp says his interest in the subject stems from childhood: his dad was an avid carp angler and, when the two of them went fishing, they would always collect up the rubbish left by others. In 2016 appalled by the amount of litter at the side of the road near his home Kemp spoke to local authorities across Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire to understand what barriers they face in effective enforcement for fly tipping. When, in April 2017, the government announced that the littering from vehicles regulations would be enacted Largely, local authorities that are using the powers are taking a civil enforcement officer approach, but there are obvious challenges with this one year later, it was, he says, a serendipitous moment. The challenge that local authorities have in tackling environmental crime comes down to two things, he says. One, gathering all the evidential-quality footage in an efficient and effective way. Two, having back-office systems that are similarly slick to enable them to discharge their responsibilities. I saw there was a real opportunity to create a cost-neutral deployment model so that councils can readily access this legislation. The result is LitterCam: a mobile camera system that is small enough to be used on the dashboard of a vehicle, but powerful enough to capture sufficient detail with a sophisticated back-office system to enable enforcement. Caught on camera Kemp has been in discussion with organisations such as the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (TPT)* the adjudicator for enforcement 26 britishparking.co.uk PN Mar20 pp26-27 Littercam.indd 26 20/02/2020 11:09