The council determines when and how your rubbish is collected. Sometimes we'll serve legal notices reminding residents of these arrangements. Anyone failing to follow the correct procedures detailed in the notice may be issued with a civil penalty notice – a requirement to pay a penalty of £60.

Ensure that:

• your rubbish is in the right container or bag (only council issued orange bags are permitted for certain households)
• you must not put out extra waste (side waste) at the side or on top of your bin 
• Your bin lid must fully close
• you must put your rubbish out before 7am on the day of collection (check your collection day online)
• you know where to put your rubbish, for example, at a specified collection point
• you must put your bins back onto your property boundary within 24 hours of collection
• your bin is labelled with your property number/address
• you don't store your containers on the public highway, including pavements, central collection points, and back alleys

If you're experiencing problems with rubbish being put out incorrectly contact us.

Residential waste presentation offences - Section 46 Environmental Protection Act (1990)

Residential waste presentation offences include, but are not restricted to:

• not presenting your waste or recycling for collection at the correct time
• not presenting your waste or recycling in the correct container
• not returning empty waste/recycling containers into the curtilage of your property between collection times

If we have written to you under section 46 Environmental Protection Act (1990)

If we have served you a notice under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act (1990) this means that we suspect that you/or people in the locality are not complying with the council’s requirements when presenting waste. Correct waste presentation will be detailed in the notice.

If we find that, within 12 months, you are continuing to fail to present waste in line with the councils’ requirements, it is likely to be a nuisance and detrimental to the local amenity and we will write to you again, the reasons will be outlined in the letter.

Any further non-compliance can result in the issue of a civil penalty notice. 

Residential waste enforcement process

The council will issue the following as part of its enforcement procedure under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act (1990):

Before we apply the enforcement process, we will have either written to you or tagged or labelled your bin on at least 2 occasions to advise you are incorrectly presenting your waste.

Stage 1 - Advisory letter with written notice

Explains how and where to present your waste and is relevant for a period of 12 months.

Stage 2 - Written warning

Explains how you have failed to comply with waste presentation requirements, the period by which this should be remedied, and the consequences of not remedying.

Stage 3 - Notice of intent (to issue a civil penalty notice)

This sets out the grounds for which the council is proposing to issue you with a civil penalty notice, the amount of that notice and your rights to make representation against its issue.

You are able to make representation to the council, explaining why you feel you should not be issued with a civil penalty notice. This must be done within 28 days.

How you can make such a representation to the council will be set out in the notice of intent.

Stage 4 - Issue of a final notice incorporating a civil penalty notice

This will set out the grounds requiring you to pay the civil penalty notice, how and when it should be paid and consequences for non-payment.

The final notice and civil penalty notice sets out how you can appeal against payment by making a First Tier Tribunal application.

Reducing fly-tipping

We regularly monitor known fly-tipping 'hot spots'.

We place CCTV in problem areas, and anyone caught dumping rubbish can be issued a fixed penalty notice up to £400 or in serious cases receive an unlimited fine or up to 2 years prison sentence.

Report fly tipping online Report fly-tipping - Lancaster City Council to help us reduce this problem.