LETTERs

Cigarette litter proposals 'unfair'

Proposals being considered by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (Defra) to extend Street Litter Control Notices (SLCNs) to make pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants and other venues responsible for cigarette litter disposal in England will expose more than 100,000 businesses to new regulations at a time when the Government is allegedly committed to reducing red tape.

These proposals will impose yet another financial burden on small businesses that add to the vibrancy of high streets and shopping centres across the country.

With the ban on smoking in enclosed public places due to come into force on 1 July, many venues will already have their hands full in preventing smoking within their premises.

Only one group of people should be expected to reduce cigarette litter - smokers themselves. Any other approach lets them assume that their litter is for someone else to clear up.

My alternative solution is an integrated approach, combining education, sanctions and a disposal infrastructure to encourage and enable smokers to dispose of litter responsibly.

This approach has worked well in some 600 cigarette litter campaigns carried out in the UK and around the world by councils, retailers, businesses and environmental groups, where driving behavioural change has led to an 87% drop in litter levels.

The proposal is unfair on small businesses which can ill-afford any further impositions on time or finances. And it is not a viable means of delivering any real or lasting impact.

We need behavioural change among smokers who toss litter on to the street.

Reducing the initial act of littering is the most cost-effective, efficient and enduring solution to the world's largest environmental litter problem.

Charles Hanshaw-Thomas

MD, CSR Solutions

charles@csrsolutions.co.uk

Some change is not for the better

I have been a tenant at my pub for 23 years. The first 18 years were with Wards of Sheffield, a very honest and friendly firm to work with.

After 150 years it sadly closed and our pub was sold to Pubmasters. After a few years it, too, sold us - this time to Punch.

In all our years with Wards we had managed to keep our heads above water, sometimes with its help, but after Wards finished things became much more difficult.

Now we have to pay £1,200 a year insurance for the bricks and mortar as well as our personal and public liability insurance. This doesn't come cheap - it's like another rent rise.

After many years of asking, repairs we thought were about to be undertaken were probably too expensive - so now Punch has sold us off to Admiral Taverns instead.

Thanks, Punch - now those repairs may never be completed.

When we were £23 short for the Punch direct debit on one occasion, the bank and Punch each charged us £30 for their trouble.

Punch has always held a few thousand pounds of our money as a bond - far more than any brewery bill we have ever owed.

Maybe if the elite didn't receive a 33% pay-rise, those repairs might have been done.

Out of six Punch pubs in Retford, two are closed, two are open, but searching for new tenants, and the other two are trying to survive.

We are so glad we're not starting out in the pub trade now, as the pleasure is not there any more.

Change is not always for the better - we can only wait and see.

Gordon Cliff

Black Boy Inn, Retford, Nottinghamshire