Good riddance to bad rubbish ... another f ly-tipper locked up
A PROLIFIC fly-tipper has been jailed after being caught on camera dumping piles of rubbish on residential roads – while claiming to run a reputable disposal firm.
Andrew Smithson, 31, got rid of builders’ rubble, carpets, mattresses and sofas over a three-year period.
He advertised his firm on websites including Gumtree and Yell.com, saying it was a registered company that recycled waste and disposed of it legally.
However, he used vans with fake licence plates to avoid detection while tipping rubbish at sites across Birmingham. Smithson ran the firm – which at times used the name A and R Removals – alongside Joel Ducille, 26. He also regularly visited a scrapyard in the city and received payments totalling £19,278.61 for scrap metal, despite not being a licensed dealer.
In the second case of its kind in a week, the pair were caught on CCTV dumping two large sofas on a street. Other images show mattresses, bed frames and a fridge left behind by them. They were also observed offloading waste across the city between May 28, 2015, and December 2, 2015.
Two Ford Transit vans with fake plates were used on four occasions. Smithson was the registered keeper of both vehicles, using the alias Andrew Roberts.
Waste enforcement unit officers seized the vans, along with two bundles of cash – £820 of which was found to be counterfeit notes – and receipts from cashing in the scrap metal in March last year.
Smithson, of Birmingham, pleaded guilty to nine fly-tipping offences and three further offences under the Fraud Act 2006, Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, and Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and banned from driving for 51 months.
Ducille, also of Birmingham, admitted four fly-tipping offences and received a ten-month sentence suspended for 18 months.
After they were sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court on Wednesday, Tony Quigley, head of the city council’s waste enforcement unit, said: ‘This prosecution shows we can and will pursue culprits who blight our neighbourhoods with fly-tipping.
‘Anyone who has waste should only use official, registered waste disposal firms – otherwise they will be contributing to fly-tipping in the city.’ The case follows the jailing of Jamie Humpage, of Walsall, who was given six months for fly-tipping offences around the West Midlands. He was convicted after CCTV footage of him throwing a mattress, a fridge and a wardrobe into a lane was shown in court.
There were almost one million cases of fly-tipping in Britain last year, and this week Countryfile presenter John Craven warned it had reached ‘epidemic’ levels.