In March teams of Liverpool City Council, police and DVLA officers are hitting the streets of Merseyside in a crackdown called Operation Cube It.
In March teams of Liverpool City Council, police and DVLA officers are hitting the streets of Merseyside in a crackdown called Operation Cube It. They?ll be crushing untaxed, unclaimed cars. The pioneering scheme is being run by Citysafe. The partnership includes Liverpool City Council, Merseyside Police, Safer Merseyside Partnership and Merseyside Fire Service.
Executive member for Community Safety Councillor Richard Kemp, who is also a member of Citysafe, said: ?Nationally the number of abandoned cars is on the increase, partly because at the moment there is no incentive for people to dispose of old and unwanted cars honestly, so they simply dump them. There are also people who think it?s great fun to joyride around in an untaxed, unregistered, uninsured car and then abandon it when they don?t want it any longer. And of course it costs huge amounts of money to deal with. Council officers can go out five and ten times to cars, which owners simply keep shifting around. We?re going to get rid of the bangers once and for all and deter people from abandoning them at all in the future. We want these cars off our streets.?
Supt Alan Jones, crime reduction manager for Merseyside Police, said: “Abandoned cars cause terrible problems for people who live in some parts of Liverpool. The problem really affects people?s quality of life. It brings neighbourhoods down, encourages crime, causes people to fear crime, and can also lead to more problems such as graffiti, vandalism and broken street lights.”
City Council neighbourhood services staff have been working with Merseyside Police over the last few months to develop the scheme. It will be piloted in Liverpool hotspots. The DVLA, council staff and police officers will inspect the cars, they will then be collected by a DVL contractor and taken away for crushing. A pilot in Kent recently was very successful; in eight weeks the team removed 642 cars, disrupted the activities of 41 criminals and raised œ335,000 in unpaid tax.
