SADLY you don’t have to travel far in Monmouthshire to see litter in our verges and hedgerows. It’s a disgusting blight on our communities and shameful that some of our fellow citizens will be to blame.

What possesses a passing motorist to chuck their redundant packaging or drinks bottles out of a window is beyond me, but the problem seems to be getting worse.

Not only a blight on our visible landscape, it’s also a danger to wildlife. In my own ward of Mitchel Troy and Trellech, Cllr Jayne McKenna and I often undertake local litterpicks and it’s disturbing to see the sorts of rubbish being discarded.

Empty drinks cans, confectionary wrappers and fast food packaging, yes, but also an increasing number of empty beer cans and bottles, pre-mixed alcoholic drinks.

Why on earth would any motorist have open alcoholic drinks in their car and then have cause to discard it from a moving vehicle?

Local authorities and governments need to get far tougher on this sort of anti-social behaviour. In Monmouthshire’s budget negotiations we managed to restore the Community Improvement Team – a partnership, which gets prisoners out in the community litterpicking known hotspots, which is good for their rehabilitation and also contributes to clearing litter.

We also secured additional investment in tackling litter and flytipping with a review of current anti-littering measures and investment in new covert cameras to catch litter criminals red-handed.

While the County Council is responsible for maintaining most of the county’s verges and hedgerows, it’s the Welsh Government who is responsible for the major arterial routes, all the A roads through the county and litter is a particular problem here.

I was pleased to see Rishi Sunak prioritise tackling anti-social behaviour in a key announcement of new penalties earlier this week, but in Wales we need to go further.

In England there are legislative differences to Wales, which make it easier to catch litter louts and prosecute them.

For instance, if you catch someone littering on dashcam footage, in England that’s admissible evidence to prosecute, but in Wales it isn’t and we look to the Welsh Government to make necessary changes.

As a society we should be making it clear that littering will not be tolerated, in the same way it isn’t tolerated in many other European countries. I hope the investment my group has secured from the council’s administration will both deter littering and catch the criminals responsible.