A campaign is to be launched to encourage people to report incidents such as dog fouling, littering and more, to help council chiefs crackdown on the issues.

It came as Hartlepool Borough Council Neighbourhood Services Committee conducted a review of its civil enforcement provision.

Concerns had previously been made as to the low numbers of fixed penalty notices for issues such as fly tipping, dog fouling and littering, in comparison to the high number of parking enforcement notices.

In 2019, 4,722 parking notices were issued in Hartlepool, in comparison to 19 fixed penalty notices for fly tipping, from 1,017 reports of the issue, and just two fixed penalty notices for dog fouling, from 220 reports.

Meanwhile just 14 littering fixed penalty notices were issued in 2019 and eight over smoking offences.

Council officers said a campaign is to be launched in the near future to encourage people to report incidents they see using the HBC Online tool.

By visiting the site (online.hartlepool.gov.uk/MyServices) residents can report issues to be picked up by officers such as littering, dog fouling and abandoned vehicles.

Tony Hanson, assistant director for environment and neighbourhoods on the council, said it is about education as well as enforcement, and urged residents to report issues they see.

He said: “For me to direct the resources to those things people have got to tell us, we’ve got to start using this new system we’ve got in place that enables things to come in.

“It goes directly to the team, not only that it gets recorded. If we want to direct particular resources to an area to deal with dog fouling what we can do is look at the statistics.

“But if they’re not coming in we can’t do that.”

Coun John Tennant, chair of the committee, echoed calls for residents to report issues in a bid to see them clamped down on.

He said: “It’s a great opportunity for members of the public to quickly hand over to the relevant people in the council issues they can deal with on an immediate basis.”

Coun Marjorie James, said any residents fearful of submitting information to the council should contact councillors to report the issues for them, but added work needs to improve from all sides.

She said: “In a lot of cases it comes down to being able to deal with confrontation, it is easy to walk around a car park or to walk around a residents parking zone and put tickets on people that shouldn’t be there.

“We require our streets to be kept clean of dog fouling and we do pay officers to deal with that challenge.

“We do need better involvement from residents to give us the better history of what’s happening on the street.”

Calls had also previously been made to create two enforcement teams, one to deal with environmental enforcement, and another to tackle parking related issues.

However council officers noted moving to two separate teams would have an increased cost of £134,000, meaning councillors backed maintaining the one team.

Coun Dave Hunter added two separate teams are not needed, but councillors need to see evidence officers are dealing with issues such as dog fouling in troubled areas.

It was also noted how recently Thirteen Group, in partnership with the council, agreed to fund two additional full-time civil enforcement officers in Hartlepool, to further tackle such environmental problems.

Council officers urged residents to report any issues at online.hartlepool.gov.uk/MyServices.