RIPA SIX MONTHLY UPDATE
The legal Services Manager has provided the following update - Number of times that the Council has authorised the use of RIPA in the last 6 months - nil. The Council last authorised the use of RIPA in March 2014.
Minutes:
The Legal Services Manager provided a six monthly update to the Committee, informing them that RIPA had not been used since March 2014. The office informed Members that the RIPA Policy had recently been review by the Community Policy Development Group and approved by Cabinet. The reason that RIPA had not been used was mainly due to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 which stated that RIPA could not be used for offences with a sanction of less than 6 months in custody. This meant it could not be used in the case of benefit fraud and was therefore only likely to be used for fly-tipping offences.
Discussion took place regarding fly tipping and the difficulty in proving who had actually tipped waste.