Fly-tipping epidemic: Now it’s 1m crimes a year
FLY-TIPPERS are turning the nation into ‘one giant tip’ as the number of offences hits a million for the first time.
Councils across England recorded 1,002,154 cases of fly- tipping in 2016/2017, up 7 per cent on the previous year as tougher deterrents failed to stem the tide of refuse.
Instead of spending money on the elderly or schools, local authorities had to spend £57.7million cleaning up the mess, up from £50million in 2015/16.
Dumped items ranged from bags of household waste, fridges and other white goods to construction rubble, tyres, asbestos and even dead animals.
Critics cite the closure of municipal dumps, charges for collecting furniture and mattresses, criminal gangs running illegal rubbish disposal services and even ‘laziness’.
Less frequent bin rounds have also been blamed as 76 per cent of English councils now only pick up domestic waste once a fortnight.
Keep Britain Tidy chief executive allison Ogden-newton said: ‘Enough is enough. It is time to give councils the resources they need to tackle this problem head- on, using some of the proceeds of the landfill tax.
‘We also need the people of Britain to stop treating our country like one giant tip.’ She called on citizens to ‘take responsibility for their unwanted stuff and make sure that, if they give their waste to someone else to dispose of, they are going to dispose of it legally’.
The surge in waste revealed in figures from the Environment Department comes despite new powers given to councils last year to punish fly-tippers. These include onthe-spot fines of £150 to £400 for small- scale offences and seizing vehicles.
But two-fifths of English local authorities have failed to use the ability to impose higher fines, according to Freedom of Information responses.
The latest official figures show the overall number of fixed penalty notices for flytipping, which also include fines for littering and antisocial behaviour, totalled 56,000 in 2016/2017. This is an increase of 56 per cent on the previous year. Prosecutions fell by a quarter from 2,135 in 2015/2016 to 1,602 in the following 12 months.
Most of the councils reporting the highest number of fly- tipping cases were in London boroughs and big cities such as Manchester and Liverpool.
The most common location was on roads and the most common amount was equiva- lent to a small van load. Martin Tett, the Local Government association’s environment spokesman, called for a faster legal system when councils take offenders to court for more serious offences.
He added: ‘Manufacturers also need to provide more take-back services so people can hand in old furniture and mattresses when they buy new ones.’ a House of Commons research report earlier this year said the causes of fly-tipping included financial saving, a lack of waste disposal facilities and laziness.
a Downing Street spokesman said: ‘We’ve been clear that flytipping is unacceptable and a blight on our landscape. That’s why we have given local councils the tools they need to tackle this problem.’
EARLIER this year the Mail exposed how doctors at Marie Stopes – Britain’s second biggest abortion provider – were signing off terminations without meeting the patient, who instead held conversations as short as 22 seconds with a call centre worker.
Today’s revelations about the same charity may relate to a single clinic, but if anything they are more disturbing.
An inspection by care watchdog the CQC found ‘pressurised’ staff were told to contact women who decided to continue their pregnancy to offer another appointment.
Inspectors also found that girls under 16 were making life- changing decisions without staff spelling out the risks.
But worst of all, in an environment described as a ‘cattle market’, employees felt ‘ encouraged’ to ensure women considering an abortion went through with it, because their ‘success’ was linked to a performance bonus. It is an allegation Marie Stopes denies – but why would staff lie? Could matters of such profound importance, about the life of an unborn child, be further cheapened? This charity, which already has a chequered history, behaves as if it is flogging insurance, not managing serious medical procedures.
Fifty years after the passing of the Abortion Act, is this really what its architects intended? FLY tipping is a profoundly antisocial crime that blights our towns and countryside. It is, of course, utterly inexcusable. But as we now learn, there were a million incidents last year, up 7 per cent – with two thirds involving household waste. It’s clear the move to fortnightly bin collections, and restrictions on accessing the tip, are partly to blame. The Mail makes a blindingly obvious point: if councils collected the rubbish every week, it wouldn’t be piling up on the streets.