The authority is working in partnership with the Metropolitan Police’s Queenstown Safer Neighbourhood team and has produced a flyer in a range of Asian and European languages, as well as English, explaining that totting is illegal. This has been distributed to tenants to hand to suspected totters.

“There appear to be three main types of totter,” explained Helen Evans of the CGMA. “Those looking to sell on to mainly Chinese restaurants, those looking for their own use, and the new-age, eco-warrior type. However, in many cases much of this waste has been condemned by the Defra inspectorate and is unfit for human consumption.”

The authority is also looking into working with the charity Fareshare, which redistributes surplus food to vulnerable people in the community, by means of a formal agreement to collect products fit for human consumption, but which might be lacking the necessary shelf life to sell. “The advantage of such a scheme is that it would reduce the amount of produce lying around for totters and save the cost of taking pallets to the compound for recycling,” said Evans.

Totting, she added, is a menace, as not only is it against market bylaws, but there have also been cases where totters have crossed the line between waste and saleable produce and taken product from tenants’ trading aprons.