‘My wife said: Stop whingeing and swearing about litter and do something about it. So I did’… Meet the man obsessed with cleaning up our roadside verges
Published: 02:14, 12 January 2024 | Updated: 02:14, 12 January 2024
The slip road of a motorway — with speeding cars and lorries hurtling past — is not exactly the ideal spot to take a walk.
It is not just the traffic. It is also filthy. Nestled in the verges of this short stretch off the southbound A3 where it reaches the M25 at junction 10 are countless empty fast-food wrappers, disposable vapes, coffee cups and a nappy, as well as empty glass and plastic bottles.
Some are filled with amber-coloured liquid…
John Read is blase about it, well almost. As founder of Clean Up Britain (CLUB), he is accustomed to seeing revolting litter on Britain’s motorways.
Last month, on this spot in Surrey, John counted 35 vapes, 27 Red Bull cans, 22 Costa[2] Coffee cups, five soiled nappies and — inexplicably — a Barbie doll[3] among the items found on the 70-metre verge.
There were also 15 Stella Artois cans, 13 Carlsberg cans, 24 Fanta and Coca-Cola cans, 16 Starbucks cups, 39 sandwich packets and two empty cans of dog food, as well as dozens of nitrous oxide canisters, seven cigarette packets and far too many cigarette butts to itemise.
No wonder it has been dubbed one of the dirtiest roads in Britain — although far from being the exception, this is now the reality across the country.
Iram Ramzan meeting John Read (right), founder of the Clean Up Britain group, who has taken National Highways to court for failing to ‘ensure its land is kept clear of litter’
As founder of Clean Up Britain, John is used to seeing revolting litter on Britain’s motorways
The disgusting debris of the M25 slip road was the prime exhibit in a hearing at Guildford Magistrates’ Court scheduled for last Wednesday, in which National Highways was accused of failing to keep its roadside land free of litter. The body is legally obliged to ‘ensure its land is kept clear’ of it.
It was believed to be the first time anyone — in this case John Read — had attempted to take a government body to court under litter-abatement laws.
The case was adjourned, but if National Highways is found guilty at a later date, it could be issued with a litter abatement order requiring it to clear the rubbish, otherwise National Highways will be fined what seems to me a very minimal amount of up to GBP2,500.
The key point, though, is that John feels the body must be publicly admonished and made to accept responsibility.
‘Don’t think this road is exceptional,’ he says. ‘It’s not.
I’ve got thousands of photos from across the country like this. They’re [National Highways] getting GBP5.4 billion a year from the Department for Transport. They’ve been given a legal mandate to keep the land clear of litter.
This is a systemic violation of their legal duties. And they’ve been getting away with it for years.’
National Highways, meanwhile, insists that it is not an enforcement body.
However, Sir Mike Penning — Tory MP for Hemel Hempstead and a former transport minister who supports Read’s campaign — makes a valid retort to that excuse: ‘They’re pretty capable of enforcing if someone is driving above the speed limit,’ he says.
‘The cameras are there, and there are enough of their officers on the highways, day in day out. The Government should rein them back in.
It’s embarrassing that people like John are taking them to court. But it’s the only way.’
Iram Ramzan (pictured) met Mr Read, who argues National Highways must be publicly admonished and made to accept responsibility for not keeping Britain’s roadsides clean
On one day last month, 35 disposable vapes, 27 Red Bull cans, 22 Costa Coffee cups five soiled nappies and a Barbie doll were just some of the items found by a Surrey road
John Read is a man on a mission and he doesn’t give up easily. In fact, this is his 12th attempt to get the quango into court.
He claims the agency has previously cleaned up roadsides at the last minute to avoid a court appearance.
It was Laurence Wells, a Clean Up Britain volunteer and councillor in nearby Cobham, who first noticed last June just how bad this particular M25 slip road was.
Clean Up Britain emailed the evidence to National Highways in July, which was acknowledged by them by email. After no further response, more photos were sent to the agency in August to show the litter was still there.
In October, when the debris still hadn’t been cleared, Clean Up Britain — founded by Read in 2010 — emailed the agency with a notice of intention to bring a litter abatement order application. On October 29, Clean Up Britain applied to Guildford Magistrates’ Court for the order, which was authorised on December 13.
Remarkably, the slip road is still full of litter when the Daily Mail visits with John and Laurence.
‘If they were smart, they would have come here on the day of their court hearing and brought it up to standard,’ says John. ‘They’re lucky the case has been adjourned.’
Road conditions are categorised from A to D in litter terms, with A being pristine and D, well, that slip road.
National Highways itself estimates that 47 per cent of its roads are category C or D.
It appears the agency’s own workmen have even made their contributions. We spot abandoned metal frames, used for road signs, and sandbags, used for weighing them down. Underneath is a bright yellow sign that reads, ironically, ‘Take your litter home’.
John is not amused. ‘How can they clean up the rubbish when they’re littering themselves!’
John Read (right) is pictured with Laurence Wells, another avid litter picker
Police have stopped Mr Read on four occasions when he’s picking litter on a verge, he says
Between April 2020 and March 2022, an astounding 45,000 bags of rubbish, weighing 451 tonnes, were collected along the 230-mile length of the M6 motorway, according to information disclosed by National Highways under Freedom of Information laws.
John, from Warwick, became a campaigner after a 400-mile car journey in 2010 from Edinburgh to London, on which he saw barely any stretches of road without rubbish.
He said: ‘I had steam coming out of my ears and I said things that you probably can’t print in your paper.
‘My wife said, ‘Instead of whingeing and swearing, why don’t you do something about it?’ By the time we got to London, I’d made the decision. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. My wife definitely regrets saying it to me.
‘She says, “When I married you, you had a nice job, you didn’t talk about litter all the time and you didn’t smell!” Well, you would smell if you’re surrounded by this stuff all day,’ he laughs.
Police have stopped Read on four occasions when he’s on a litter-strewn verge, but he has never been arrested.
Indeed, after being on the slip road verge for an hour, workmen spot us and film us, saying we should not be here.
While Laurence is an avid litter picker, John says it’s ‘a bit like mopping up while the kitchen taps are still running’.
Laurence adds that people ‘suffer from litter blindness — they almost forget it’s there’.
When not pursuing litter louts, John co-runs the British Football Academy, which spots talented players for the Premier League.
His job takes him around the country and, in the past year, he has driven 24,000 miles on 39 motorways, and stopped on 250 hard shoulders, slip roads and roundabouts in pursuit of evidence.
He receives tip-offs from the public and drives to collect the evidence. He doesn’t hold back on his feelings. ‘The whole country is a dump. Even our rivers are full of s***!
It’s a national embarrassment. It’s an appalling indictment of our people.’
Indeed, a Parliamentary Select Committee in 2015 compared England with countries in Europe, Japan and North America, concluding it was arguably the most littered nation in the West.
‘You don’t have this problem in mainland Europe,’ says Laurence. ‘I’ve lived in Japan and in schools they don’t have caretakers — they make the children clean up.’
So just why have Britain’s roads become such an eyesore?[4]
To John, it’s a ‘microcosm of what’s wrong with British governance. A few friends were saying none of them have pride in this country, because they’re appalled at the way politicians act.
They think, well if our leaders don’t care and they break the rules… There’s no example of leadership.’
And the vast majority of litter bugs are young men.
‘They say this young generation is more environmentally conscious — but not everyone is Greta [Thunberg]!’ says John.
He has previously slammed ‘soft-touch Britain’ and believes the UK’s policy when it comes to littering, which is a maximum GBP150 fine, is not harsh enough.
‘Someone messaged me from Canada saying they can impose up to £1 million fines!’ says John.
Laurence agrees with tougher deterrence, too.
It was Laurence Wells, a Clean Up Britain volunteer and councillor in nearby Cobham, who first noticed last June just how bad this particular M25 slip road was
Without change from the top, John says it’s ‘a bit like mopping up while the kitchen taps are still running’
A spokesperson for National Highways told the Mail: ‘Littering is a social problem and we’re working hard to tackle it on our roads. We comply with our duties under the Environmental Protection Act.
‘Our people are litter-picking almost every day.
To keep them safe we have to close motorway lanes, delaying drivers and costing millions of pounds.
‘We are trialling AI-enabled cameras to gather evidence to provide to local authorities who carry out enforcement.
But if people don’t drop litter in the first place, it wouldn’t need to be picked up — so we urge road users to take their litter home.’
Clean Up Britain is not giving up, and plans to launch further legal challenges using other examples of dirty roadsides — such as junction 16 of the M40, where they counted 67 Red Bull cans — and longer stretches of the M6 and the M62.
‘We have a beautiful country.
But people don’t treat it with respect or pride,’ says John.
References
- ^ Iram Ramzan (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Costa (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Barbie doll (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ become such an eyesore? (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Barbie (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Costa Coffee (www.dailymail.co.uk)