Tribunal Slaps Down Hartlepool Borough Council Over Bin Fine Blunder – As Local Resident Wins Appeal...

Local Resident defeats council in FPN appeal, amid growing concern over Hartlepool Borough Council’s failure to follow enforcement rules.

5th June 2025

A local resident, who was slapped with a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) for allegedly failing to bring in her wheelie bins from the street on time has had her penalty notice overturned on appeal – with the tribunal ruling that the council 'simply didn't follow the rules' when it served the local resident the on the spot fine...

Joanne Liddle, a local resident, took her case to the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber), where her appeal was upheld this week. The tribunal hearing, held on 3rd June 2025, found that Hartlepool Borough Council had failed to provide sufficient evidence to show that the penalty notice issued against her was valid, with the tribunal quashing the fine, freeing Ms. Liddle from the £100 financial burden.

The decision is said to have forced Hartlepool Borough Council into a humiliating climbdown, with critics claiming its yet another sign of the chaos unfolding behind the scenes of a 'rudderless' & leaderless council when it comes to even the most basic enforcement processes being upheld...

It’s understood the tribunal criticised the council’s failure to comply with proper procedures in issuing the FPN, with sources claiming it amounted to “Nothing less than a complete breakdown of the FPN process” – raising wider concerns about how many other fines may have been wrongly issued..

Its claimed at one point, Hartlepool Borough Council had just 'two enforcement officers' covering the whole of the town !

This ruling's also said to be a major blow to the council’s recent clampdown on street-level issues such as fly tipping, littering and property-related nuisances, where its claimed problems have only worsened following a decades worth of cuts to frontline services – & critics claiming the council’s enforcement system is now simply 'not fit for purpose'.

At one point, its claimed Hartlepool Borough Council was relying on just two street wardens to patrol and police the entire town – a situation many local residents branded as “laughable.”

The council has previously admitted it was struggling to recruit and retain staff willing to carry out the unpopular job of issuing fines. Now, it seems the council's inability to properly manage its own enforcement regime is backfiring, with this case exposing deeper structural failings in how fines are being issued, recorded, and defended.

Some observers fear this won’t be the last appeal to hit the council where it hurts either. With one council worker telling Durham & Teesside Today: “This is merely the tip of the iceberg,”. “If the council can’t even get the basics right on enforcement of FPN's, people will rightly question whether any of these fines can be enforced at all.”

With this latest fiasco, confidence in the council’s ability to act fairly and lawfully when penalising residents is once again said to be under the microscope, with the question now being: how many more of these fines have been issued unlawfully?