Banking group Santander has been fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £380 costs this week for persistently leaving commercial rubbish on the pavement outside one its Bristol city centre branches.
A council officer found waste belonging to the bank in Baldwin Street eight times in the last year outside the permitted hours of 7am-10am and 5pm-7pm. Staff were warned about the offences and three fixed penalty notices were served on the branch.
Council environmental officer Martin Lawrence: “We had tried many times to encourage them to stop leaving out their rubbish in this way and finally we felt the only way to get them to change was to prosecute them for constant breaches of the notice served on them earlier in the year.”
Santander failed to respond to the charges and was fined in its absence.
Councillor Guy Poultney, cabinet member for neighbourhoods, added: “Commercial waste left out in this way can blight an area. We have recently regained the Purple Flag for keeping the city centre a pleasant place to be and we will take every action that we can to keep it that way.”
