A dog walker who refused to pay a fine after a litter enforcement officer claimed to have seen her pet fouling in a park has had her court case dropped following a damning investigation into the officer’s employers.

Janet Booker was handed a fixed penalty notice for £50 while out with Bindi, her three-year-old former rescue hound, at Darenth Country Park in Dartford, at around 10.20am on Tuesday, November 15.

The ticket handed to her by a Kingdom officer on behalf of Dartford council states her dog fouled and she deliberately walked away without picking it up, which Mrs Booker has described as “a fabrication”.

She was so insistent Bindi wasn’t responsible for the mess, she refused to pay the fine and prepared a huge file of evidence to defend herself at Medway Magistrates’ Court, where it was going to be her word against the officer’s on Friday, July 14.

But after a BBC Panorama investigation revealed that Kingdom officers employed by other councils in Kent were being offered incentives for issuing tickets, Dartford council leader Cllr Jeremy Kite (Con) said he would be assembling a panel to investigate the company’s work.

Now Mrs Booker, a physiotherapist and biologist with almost 30 years of experience, has been told she won’t have to pay the fine or defend herself in court, where she could have been handed a criminal record, a fine of up to £1,000 for dog fouling and £2,500 for littering, plus court costs.

“I am now quite convinced that it is actually company policy to mug people,” said the 55-year-old, of Sussex Road, Dartford.

“It’s a really unpleasant money-making exercise that does nothing to actually protect the environment.

“Take a walk through Central Park and look at all the cans in the river, go though Dartford town centre, and you can see that.

“Instead they’re jumping on people at bus stops and women with soft dogs.

“Littering is a huge problem but this is not an efficient way to get rid of it.”

Despite having the dispute over the fine hanging over her head for more than six months, Mrs Booker does not want an apology from Kingdom or Dartford council — she just wants Kingdom out of the town.

She recalls her confrontation with the officer, who she said “had the common sense of a five-year-old”, and says she “would be telling a lie” if she had chosen to pay the fine.

“We walked around five fields that morning, across the top of the first field, and my dog fouled,” she recalled.

"I told him to put it into the palm of his hand because it was freezing cold. He looked absolutely horrified" - Janet Booker

“I picked it up, put it into a poo bag, and carried on walking. All of these fields are divided up by massive hedges a good three to four metres thick.

“Then I became aware of someone really shouting at me and I turned around and way back was this bloke dressed like a policeman. I stopped and the guy catches up with me and he’s so out of breath and being really theatrical, and I actually said to him, ‘are you alright? Slow down, it’s alright’.

“He went into his speech and said I’d allowed my dog to foul and I said I’m sorry I don’t remember where. We started walking back and I told him people seemed pleased that we had environmental officers and that if I’d done something wrong there was no problem and that I’d pay.

“We walked past the bin where I put my poo bag and he went into some longer grass where I’m really confident my dog didn’t even walk, and he finds really old excrement. Anyone that cleans up dog poo would know it was at least three days old. It had grass growing through it and it was dry.

“He said my dog did it and that he saw me stop, put my hand in my pocket deliberately looking for a poo bag, make an assessment of the situation and then walk off. He told me he was trained in body language.

“I used to be a microbiologist so I just pulled out my poo bag, picked up quite a large amount of it, and it had the consistency of hummus. I did the bag up and told him to put it into the palm of his hand because it was freezing cold. He looked absolutely horrified.

“He started prodding it like a doorbell and just kept saying he didn’t agree.”

Refusing to accept Mrs Booker’s analysis of the faeces, the officer handed her a ticket and she complained to Dartford council when she got home.

It soon became apparent the only way she could appeal was to go through a magistrates’ court and she made her first appearance at Medway on Thursday, April 13.

Mrs Booker disputed the officer’s written statement regarding his account of events and it also emerged that video footage recorded by a body camera he was wearing at the time had been lost.

Mrs Booker says she has “never been so depressed with procedures and practices that she pays for”.

“The only way to get anyone to listen to you is to go and talk to a magistrate — what a waste of money,” she said.

"I am now quite convinced that it is actually company policy to mug people" - Janet Booker

“I’ve been a chartered biologist since 1989, I’ve worked in biological science since 1984.

“I’ve handled some really disgusting things and I’m not phased by picking up dog poo.”

Mrs Booker had assembled a large file of evidence including photos, satellite images to demonstrate the distance between her and the officer when he made his observation, which she says was some 400 metres, and a testimony from a vet backing her judgment of dog excrement.

Kingdom was offered opportunity to comment

Kingdom was the subject of a special investigation called Inside the Litter Police on the BBC’s Panorama programme last week.

It looked into the training, behaviour and practices carried out by staff, who are employed by a number of councils across Kent to tackle littering.

Their wardens can issue on-the-spot fines, but secret filming by an undercover Panorama reporter showed one manager boasting that they were offered incentives for issuing tickets.

One manager said that during their time working in Ashford they got “a little competency allowance” for every four tickets issued, which he described as “a bonus”.

In a statement Kingdom said that it offered a “competency allowance” but that it was discretionary and only paid if officers met all basic competencies.

Gravesham council confirmed this week that its contract with Kingdom had come to an end.

The agreement expired earlier this year and the council now undertakes its own environmental enforcement, issuing fines to those caught littering or committing other offences such as dog fouling.

Following the Panorama programme, Ashford council and Maidstone council both temporarily took Kingdom officers off their streets to review their practices.