DESPITE holding his hands up to a littering offence, an Alton man has been left outraged by the scale of the fine he’s been dealt.

Adam Miller, who lives in Four Marks, was issued a £100 fixed-penalty notice for littering in Farnham after dropping a cigarette butt down a drain in Long Garden Way.

He is now calling for a reduction of his fine if Waverley Borough Council agrees it is “disproportionate”.

Having eaten lunch at a cafe on Castle Street, Farnham, Mr Miller decided to smoke a cigarette before heading home.

In a letter addressed to the environmental services department at Waverley, Mr Miller writes: “Stopping to dispose of the filter, I initially missed the drain and paused, trying to leverage the tiny thing in with my foot.

“It became trapped in a gap at the edge of the drain and I had difficulty manoeuvring it in. I did not want to leave it on the pavement.

“Having reflected on the experience I do completely appreciate that this is not an appropriate way to dispose of it and I should have placed it into the bin at the end of the lane, as I often would do anyway.”

He described the enforcement officer’s demeanour as “officious and domineering”.

Mr Miller had “tried to make up for the offence by retrieving the filter from the drain”, to which the officer “told me not to bother”.

He continued: “If he didn’t think it was worth clearing up, why was he penalising me for it?

“The litter itself appeared to make little difference to him.”

Mr Miller had reportedly even used pens in an attempt to retrieve the offending cigarette end, “to show the officer that I took the littering seriously and that there was at least one alternative to his chosen approach”.

Mr Miller has also requested to know Waverley’s policy in regard to the “proportionality of penalties for littering offences”, as well as asking whether enforcement officers have the option “not to issue a fixed-penalty notice if they see a minor act of littering”.

“I would not have rejected a discreet word in my ear from someone who cared about the town,” he said.

“Instead of this, the approach of your representative was officious and punitive. He was not unprofessional but he was oppressive.”

Mr Miller further described the officer as “like an aggressive salesman practising his method on people he could hold hostage to the law”. And of the fixed-penalty notice, which he summarises as either “pay up or risk becoming a criminal”, Mr Miller says “the line between this and blackmail is a fine one”.

He added: “There is implicit intimidation and the threat of criminalisation. It puts me in mind of gangster methodology and your agent was in fact a scoundrel. ‘Pay us this money or suffer the consequences’ is what it ultimately amounts to.”

Mr Miller went on to highlight “the guidance does mention proportionality”, asking the council to look at the attached photograph showing the size of a cigarette filter, as shown bottom left.

In response to Mr Miller’s letter, a Waverley spokesman said: “We do not condone littering in the borough on any scale. We enforce to challenge behaviour and attitudes that littering is acceptable.

“Litter disposed of in drains ends up in our watercourses and pollutes the natural environment as highlighted by David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II documentary.

“Waverley Borough Council spends over one million pounds each year cleaning the streets of litter discarded because of this behaviour. We do, however, expect all our officers to act in a professional manner and use discretion where appropriate.

“If somebody feels they have been unfairly treated, or feels they have been unfairly fined, we encourage them to go through our appeals process by emailing [email protected] or writing to Environmental Enforcement, East Hampshire District Council, Penns Place, Petersfield GU31 4EX.”

* Do you think fines should be proportionate to the littering offence? Or is the fine as charged to Mr Miller appropriate? Let us know by e-mailing [email protected].