Following many comments from VentnorBlog readers in just over a week, it appears that “The battle to beat dog-fouling on the Island is to be stepped up by the Isle of Wight Council …”, or so the CP is telling us today.
This is nothing short of a victory for Islanders who have been desperate for this action to have been taken for years.
So how has this all come about?
40 of your comments
Last Wednesday (29th Feb), VB ran a Letter to the Editor which questioned why Ventnor residents should effectively have to pay twice to have dog mess-free streets.
Islanders left 30 comments on VentnorBlog and a further 10 on VB‘s Facebook page.
70 more comments
Given the clear strength of feeling from Islanders on this, we did further research, leading to VB revealing on Monday that the Isle of Wight council hadn’t successfully prosecuted anyone for Dog Fouling on the Island throughout 2010/11.
Your response? 36 comments on VB and another 34 on Facebook.
Another 41 comments
More digging led us to discover that 1) not only had the Isle of Wight council issued only one penalty notice in connection to dog fouling during the whole of year 2010/11, but that 2) the council couldn’t tell us that last time they had successfully prosecuted anyone for Dog Fouling on the Island.
We published all of this under the title Dog Fouling: Proof Of Owners Getting Away With It For Years.
A further 20 comments from you on VB and 21 comments on Facebook.
Take pride – you’ve brought a change
Islanders who contributed their comments to these stories can take pride at the changing of council policy.
All of this has led to the council doing an about-face and suddenly discovering that they need to do something about dog mess, telling the Island that they’ll be “taking a more robust approach to dog fouling.”
Laughable excuse
Here’s the laughable comment from Bill Murphy, Head of planning and regulatory services about why the council hasn’t acted before: “We have, in recent years, favoured an approach of educating dog owners, rather than issuing them with fixed penalty notices. This tactic had been effective although there is clearly now evidence a firmer approach is required.”
(Come on Bill, you’ve really got to stop taking Islanders for idiots. It clearly hasn’t been effective, we’re all very aware of how much dog mess there’s been around for years.)
Your comments change things
Ask the council and of course they’ll denied that your comments on VB had anything to do with their change of policy.
From where we stand, that simply isn’t the case.
Why else are they acting now when they haven’t done anything about it for years?
Image: nostri-imago under a CC BY 2.0 license
