NEILSTON’s community council is calling for “less poo, less talk, more action” from the local authority.

Members of Neilston Community Council (NCC) have hit out at East Renfrewshire Council (ERC) claiming that it failed to back a community project.

The community council claims that the ERC failed to back the project despite it costing nothing to the council - and even went as far as to outright ignore the community council’s requests for support.

However, ERC says that this was not the case and used the launch of its own anti-dog fouling initiative, launched this week, as an example of how it is combating the stinky scourge.

The claims come just weeks after ERC doubled possible fines for failing to pick up after pets to £100, which prompted a backlash from the community calling for more poop bins.

Jim Sheriff, from NCC, said: “The community council proposed a self financed three-year pilot scheme to ERC to help reduce dog fouling and in spite of alleged support from our councillors we have been refused even a meeting with the head of community safety to discuss how we can work together.

“Now we are reduced to posters and leaflets, having returned some funding due to a lack of community engagement by ERC."

“As a matter of interest the 24 fixed penalty notices issued for dog fouling contrasts to the 5436 issued by the wardens service for parking, which was not mentioned by the council spokesman. Perhaps this illustrates the real focus of Community Safety.”

ERC responded to claims by the community that it was not issuing enough dog fouling fines in last week’s issue.

The community council had proposed a scheme which would focus on long-term education in the village.

Its plan consisted of ten phases, including a consultation phase with the people of the village, a stage for funding applications, and increase in surveillance across Neilston - which it claimed would cost ERC nothing.

Jim Sheriff continued: “We want less poo, more talk, more action.”

However, the local authority claimed that it had only advised NCC to hold off on their plans as ERC was rolling out a similar scheme across the whole area.

ERC’s own “Bag it and Bin it” scheme was rolled out on April 1.

It has also stressed the reason for the discrepancy between the number of dog fouling penalty notices and parking fines related to the different levels of difficulty involved in catching perpetrators.

The council spokeswoman said: “Our wardens sat around the table with Neilston Community Council to discuss the dog fouling issue and we appreciate Mr Sheriff’s ideas and suggestions for an anti-dog fouling campaign targeted solely at the Neilston area.

"To support the changes to legislation we have recently launched an East Renfrewshire-wide anti dog fouling campaign aimed at our entire East Ren community. It drives home the message that owners are responsible for picking up their dog’s mess and reminds people that dog fouling fines have increased.

"We are fully committed to cracking down on dog mess across the area and holding dog owners responsible for their actions."

“Our community wardens act as the eyes and ears of the community and are visible for their work across East Ren to reduce all forms of anti-social behaviour and crime including dog fouling, litter, noise pollution and smoking legislation, car parking, providing out of hours security and attending incidents of anti-social behaviour as directed by the 24-hour CCTV control room.

“Most of our anti-dog fouling work is carried out by plain clothes community wardens so we can take action when we see an offence being committed. Our work is targeted to the areas where we receive reports of dog fouling and we are reminding residents to report dog fouling to report it on our 24 hour ring and report line - 0800 013 0076 or visit www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/dogs.”