A man has been slapped with a fine after dropping a cigarette butt outside his place of work.

Matthew Holdsworth was caught by a Kirklees Council enforcement officer committing the offence outside 1st 4 Windows in Batley.

He was witnessed dropping the cigarette into the ground, prosecutor David Stickley told Kirklees magistrates.

Mr Stickley said: “She approached the defendant, identified herself and said she was filming the interaction with a body camera.

“Then she explained that he’d committed an offence and he would get a fixed penalty notice.”

Kirklees Magistrates Court
Kirklees Magistrates Court

Holdsworth, of Bradford Road in Batley, failed to pay the £75 fixed penalty notice and was prosecuted.

The 32-year-old pleaded guilty to throwing down litter in a place to which the Environmental Protection Act applied.

Holdsworth told magistrates he didn’t pay the fine because he believed that it would be quashed due to the littering being on private land.

He told magistrates that everyone drops cigarettes and litter outside the business and he had to clean it up every morning because “nobody uses a bin.”

But Mr Stickley replied that the law applies to private land as well as public areas.

He said: “Large shopping centres and car parks are private property.

“If the law said it had to be public property for offences to occur then places like Sainsbury’s would be filled with rubbish.”

Magistrates fined Holdsworth £45 and told him to pay £30 victim surcharge.