THE Council team tasked with keeping North Ayrshire tidy has celebrated its first anniversary.

And after a hugely successful first 12 months - which has seen them hand out more fines than ever to offenders – they say the quest to keep our communities clean has only just started.

The Streetscene Environmental Enforcement Team were established last April and led by the Council’s first Fly-Tipping Officer Jim Heaney.

The former Community Warden is responsible for a team of four environmental enforcement officers who patrol the area, monitor dumping ‘hotspots’ and issue fixed-penalty notices when people are caught leaving a mess.

Whether it’s a fly-tipper, a smoker throwing their butt on the ground or a dog owner not cleaning up after their pet, the team are determined to make a difference.

The team has issued 228 fixed penalty notices to fly-tippers – compared to 14 in 2015 and in total have issued 520 fixed penalties for a variety of offences, also including dog fouling, litter and fly posting. A year earlier only 32 fixed penalties were handed out. The team has also reported multiple offenders to the Procurator Fiscal for consideration of prosecution.

Jim Heaney said: “The issues we deal with are ones that affect communities across Scotland. We aren’t going to solve everything within the space of a year.

“But we are very proud of the work we’ve done over the last 12 months and feel we’re having a really positive impact.

“It is important to highlight the number of fines and actions we’ve taken as it shows that we really mean business. We are very visible and approachable and more local people are now reporting environmental crimes because they know we will take decisive action.”

The team works closely with local community councils and tenant and residents meetings. They also implemented the OB-litter-ATE initiative – which was piloted earlier this year at Auchenharvie Academy - to tackle lunch time litter at schools.

They have also used newly reinstated legislation to tackle areas of land that are used for fly-tipping in the form of litter abatement notices.

And Jim has promised more is to come over the weeks and months.

He added: “There is a lot going on and we will be looking to build on that. We will also be looking to address messy shop fronts by serving litter control notices on irresponsible shop keepers.

“The majority of people respect the environment and communities they come from. We are determined that those who don’t will get punished. This will in turn continue to act as a deterrent to others.

“Further down the line, we hope to have body cameras and deployable CCTV systems to identify and enforce against offenders of environmental crime.”