Fly-tipping hotspot blocked off after £1m clear up
COUNCILLOR ASKED FOR ENTRANCE TO FORMER WASTE SITE TO BE MADE INACCESSIBLE
HUGE concrete barriers have been used to blockade a notorious former tip.
Kirklees Council positioned the three blocks at the entrance to the former Hunter’s waste site on Queen’s Mill Road in Lockwood after local Green councillors warned it was becoming a fly-tipping hotspot.
The padlocked gate was recently forced and a lorry load of commercial waste dumped on the land, which is council-owned.
Clr Andrew Cooper (Green, Newsome) said he was ‘really concerned’ that the authority would clear the rubbish but that ‘the same thing would just happen again,’ incurring more unnecessary cost.
He said: “I asked for the entrance to be blocked in a substantial way and not just putting another padlock on. Kirklees have now put three huge concrete blocks across the entrance. We need to do more of this ‘target hardening’ around fly-tipping hotspots to make life as difficult as possible for rogue waste companies who are a blight on our communities.”
The cost to taxpayers of clearing the land is understood to have been more than £1m.
Since the land was cleared of an 8,000-tonne mountain of stinking trash
We need to do more of this ‘target hardening’ around fly-tipping
hotspots
four years ago it has been used as an illegal campsite by traveller groups.
The site at Primrose Hill was cleared in the spring of 2017 in an operation that involved the council, the fire service, the Environment Agency, Public Health England, Yorkshire Water and waste contractor SUEZ.
Former site operator Sam Hunter escaped prosecution after the council said he and his mother, Jacinta Hunter, had ‘disposed of their interests in two Hunter Group companies and vacated the site.’