A COUNCIL chief will be invited to a town meeting to explain what steps are being taken to stop Barnard Castle’s growing problem with dog mess.
Frustration is mounting with residents becoming increasingly angry about the amount of dog poo on the streets, last week’s town council meeting heard.
Members complained about a lack of enforcement and vowed to find a way to beat the problem. Cllr Fiona Turnbull told last week’s full council meeting: “The amount you see when you walk the streets is shocking.
“I have had numerous people come up to me. We are doing all these positive things for the town and we have all these new people visiting the town but we have got dog mess all over the town.”
She complained about a lack of dog bins, saying: “We seemed to have had bigger bins pre-Covid and they were replaced by smaller bins and less of them which seems ridiculous because there is no decrease in demand.”
She suggested dog poo bags could be given away. However, she was told by the clerk, Martin Clark, that the town council did this a few years ago but people took too many, and when they were limited, members of the public were “abusive” to staff. However, councillors agreed that working with schools and young people could provide a long-term solution by educating people of the dangers. Cllr Mike McLean asked: “Is it a problem we have got with a lack of bins or is it that people just don’t care?”
He explained the problems he had in getting action from Durham County Council after catching a dog fouling culprit on CCTV.
Cllr McLean said: “I got through to the green and clean team but that complaint went through to the warden who contacted me but believed I was reporting flytipping in a village I had never even heard of. I had to re-fill the form on the website and by the end of all that I had lost the will to live. I asked if anyone was interested in going after the person because I had footage. I was told I had to speak to another department.
“It was just not worth it at the end of the day.”
Cllr Chris Foote-Wood said irresponsible pet owners would always let their dogs foul the streets but more bins would encourage the responsible ones. However, he added: “I’m not dead keen on providing more free bags. There was a parish council that put out a bucket with 50 or 100 of them and someone took the lot. They then spread them out and someone collected the lot.”
Councillors agreed to invite a boss from Durham County Council to a town council meeting so they can be quizzed on the authority’s policy, how often dog wardens visit the town and how many people had been fined in the past year.
