Daily Mail 6th September 2008
A council used controversial anti-terror laws to spy on a crew of refuse collectors after receiving a tip-off that they were incorrectly emptying a dustbin.
Officials set up an undercover surveillance operation in an attempt to prove the three binmen were being bribed by a newsagent to take away trade waste when he had not paid the extra fee for it to be collected.
Bury Council in Greater Manchester said the investigation proved that the men had removed trade waste - and it also claimed they had used their refuse truck for ‘pecuniary gain’ because one accepted a bottle of strawberry-flavoured mineral water from the shopkeeper.
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In the frame: An image from Bury Council's surveillance of the three binmen
As a result, the refuse collectors, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were suspended on full pay for ten months and then sacked.
But now they have won more than £100,000 between them in an out-of-court settlement after claiming unfair dismissal.
One of the collectors said: ‘I thought the law allowing secret filming was to help protect us from terrorists - not for filming three binmen who might have made a mistake by collecting an extra bin or accepting a bottle of pop.’
The episode is just the latest example of town halls using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) - introduced in 2000 ‘in the interests of national security’ - to investigate trivial offences.
Only nine organisations, including the police and security services, were allowed to use the Act when it was introduced. Now that number has risen to 792, including 474 councils.
The latest figures show councils use it more than 10,000 times a year to spy on residents suspected of crimes including dog fouling and littering.
In April, a council in Dorset used the powers to spy for weeks on a family it wrongly suspected of breaking rules on school catchment areas.
Bury Council informed Greater Manchester Police of its intention to film the binmen in October 2006. An official sat in a car outside Oak Bank News, Mr Amed Naseer’s shop, on three separate occasions.
But one of the binmen said: ‘None of us had been told the shopkeeper had cancelled his agreement with the council to collect his trade waste.
'And anyway, there were three bins at the shop - two for household rubbish and one for glass and tins, but no trade waste. The shopkeeper said he took his trade waste to the local tip.
‘We were also accused of accepting a two-litre bottle of mineral water as a sort of bribe. It was all nonsense.’
The binmen were accused of emptying three bins from a newsagents - but the bins were not trade waste (file pic)
The films, seen by The Mail on Sunday, do not appear to show any evidence of the mineral water or of trade waste being taken by the men. The tribunal was set for June this year but the men reached a settlement just three days before it was due to begin.
As part of the agreement, they are prevented from revealing exactly how much the council paid them.
Brian Bamford, from Unison, the union which represents the binmen, said: ‘The council’s decision to film the men would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious. It is like something from the pages of a George Orwell novel. Now council taxpayers will pick up the bill.’
A Bury Council spokesman said: ‘The council has a duty to investigate allegations that have properly been made. The council considers that the use of its powers under the RIPA in this case were proportionate and lawful.’
£60 to keep your wheelie rat-free
Householders are paying up to £60 a year to have wheelie bins cleaned because the abolition of weekly collections has raised their fears of infestations by rats, lice and maggots.
Specialist companies are being set up to disinfect bins. One firm, the Wheelie Bin Cleaning Service, says it is already washing 200,000 bins a month. Most companies charge £2.50 to £5 per bin.
Environmental scientist Doretta Cocks, founder of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, said: ‘It is unreasonable that householders already saddled with high council tax bills have to pay extra to keep bins clean as a result of councils cutting collections.’
UK Lockdown point of view
Terror legislation being put to good use against yet more non terrorists, we can all feel safer now that the RIPA law has preserved our national security by helping to spy on refuse collectors and local shopkeepers; terror laws introduced to supposedly aid the police and other security services in the so-called 'war on terror' have now been given to most local councils around the country, due to the criminal policies of this government the slide towards totalitarianism is now closer than ever, you have been warned.
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