New moves considered in bid to beat £370k fly-tip cost

Instances of single items being dumped have increased from 1,903 in 2018 to almost 4,200 in 2021, RMBC’s figures show.

Over the same period, the number of larger incidents — where multiple items are fly-tipped — dropped from 3,614 to 1,780.

It meant a total of 5,977 incidents last year and a report to councillors said: “It is reasonable to estimate that the total cost of dealing with fly tipping in the borough is around £370,000 per year.”

The number of fines issued by for large fly-tipping jumped from 30 in 2019 to 81 in 2020 — but fell back to 34 last year.

Tom Smith, assistant director for community safety and streetscene, said: “One of the biggest issues in the pandemic has been our ability to enforce.

“That hasn’t been about a change in the law or in our focus but one reflection we have to make is that a lot of staff who were dealing with fly-tipping offences were also dealing with Covid offences.

“That does mean that our response around fly-tipping from an enforcement perspective maybe hasn’t been quite as resourced as it was prior to the pandemic.”

Cllr Sue Ellis suggested looking into courses where offenders have to pay to attend — like those taken by speeding motorists to avoid penalty points.

Sam Barstow, the council’s head of community safety, said: “It has been mooted. What we haven’t done is any detailed work to look at the resource implications of that.

“But we want to give the fly-tipping action plan a bit of a refresh and reinvigoration, so that’s absolutely something that we will explore through that.”

Cllr Ian Jones said it was often the case that residents would pass on information like names and vehicle registration numbers but were reluctant to make statements.

“They are frightened of some of these people,” he added. “One of my residents tried stopping them and nearly got ran over for his efforts.

“The more CCTV we can get, because a picture paints a thousand words, the more successful prosecutions we can get.”

Cllr Alan Atkin said the council needed to keep those reporting fly-tipping informed on what action is being taken — or risk residents taking matters into their own hands.

He added: “If we don’t start communicating better with them, they will go out and start being vigilantes, I’m sure.”

Mr Barstow said residents were kept informed where personally affected by the offences but there was no resource to contact the thousands who send reports in each year.

Cllr Michael Bennett-Sylvester said the increase in single-item cases looked “horrendous” — and suggested it might be connected to the tips being closed and the smaller general waste bins.

The four dump-it sites were closed on March 27, 2020, reopening on May 6 but with strict restrictions and lengthy queues.

Cllr Bennett-Sylvester said more should be done to let residents know criteria for having an extra bin, and to promote the council’s bulky waste collections and Rothercard discount scheme.

“I just feel that if we could undercut every white van man, then it’s a case of a bit coming in to us and hopefully making it harder for them to make business out of this,” he added.