Time for Keep Britain Tidy to be put in the bin

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

Nearly three years ago Parliament produced a damning report saying England was one of the worst developed countries in the world for litter and fly tipping. Worse than most of the rest of Europe, worse than Japan and worse than the United States and Canada.

Furthermore this situation has remained the same for 12 years under successive Labour, Coalition and Tory governments. And this is despite tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers money being poured into the former quango Keep Britain Tidy to provide leadership to tackle this problem.

The deregulatory coalition government of Tories and Liberal Democrats  thought they would find a solution by abolishing the quango and turning it into a charity  which now has to raise funds from cash strapped local authorities and big business.

The knee jerk reaction of a Left minded blogger might be to persuade an incoming Labour government to push taxpayer’s money back to Keep Britain Tidy. But after an investigation looking at its precarious finances and its rather lacklustre approach to tackling the problem this would be the worst thing it could do.

The real problem is that successive gutless ministers of all parties  (perhaps they have at the back of their minds that they could take lucrative directorships after leaving politics)  won’t tackle the real cause of much of our litter – the  products of big multinationals like McDonalds and Wrigley’s and the tobacco companies –  who take no or little responsibility for the problem.

There is a parallel here  with  Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs – who connive with big multinationals to avoid paying their fair share of tax which would go a long way to providing better public services and a cleaner  public space.

There is a simple solution here either these companies pay up for a clean up or the Government levies a tax on them ( not us) to employ someone else to do it. I bet the firms would come up soon with some innovative solutions to avoid either.

Now why have I concluded that Keep Britain Tidy is a no no solution  despite being told by some people that its  new director,Allison Ogden-Newton is much livelier than her predecessor, Phil Barton.

The charity has a guilty secret. It has a pension deficit of  £4.5m  for a closed scheme on a turnover of just £5m and assets worth £2.5m. For some private companies this  could lead them to cease trading.

The 2015-16 accounts lodged with the Charity Commission say :

The report reveals that the trustees – who would be liable if  Keep Britain Tidy went bust – certify it is a going concern. But to do this they have had to put aside £2m – equivalent to six  months operating costs -to ensure that it stays afloat.

Allison Ogden-Newton, new chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy

When I put this to the charity – who first ignored my request – I got this reply from Ms Ogden-Newton.

Clive Betts MP, chair of critical House of Commons report on the state of England’s litter.

Clive Betts, the Labour chairman of the committee, also made this observation.