Councillor’s family scammed by a fly-tipper who dumped rubbish

Son paid £100 to have waste removed only to end up clearing it himself after it was dumped by unscrupulous workman

The family of a citycouncillor in Peterborough were ‘scammed’ by a fly-tipper, the party has claimed, after allegations were made on social media by political opponents.

The Labour party’s council group said the son of Cllr Mahboob Hussain had been “duped” into paying £100 to a trader he did not realise was a “serial fly-tipper”.

Labour insisted that Cllr Hussain was completely unaware that items including a fridge freezer had been dumped at Mallard Road business park in Bretton until the party carried out an internal investigation after the issue was raised by a Conservative councillor.

It said the member for Central ward has been shielding during the current crisis and that “fly-tipping was the last thing on his mind”.

Labour has also released a statement from Cllr Hussain’s eldest son Haroon, who said: “The scammer’s pitch seemed plausible because the household recycling site in Peterborough had recently re-opened.

“The scammer said he had just done a collection for someone in Bretton and had some space left to take away household items for cash.”

The items were later discovered by Eve Taylor close to her cosmetics business on the morning of Monday, May 18. The fly-tip allegedly contained personal information linking it to Cllr Hussain.

A political row was then sparked after Conservative councillor for Bretton, Chris Burbage, posted on Facebook: “Such a shame to see this kind of mess dumped in Bretton.

“Evidence has been recovered along with evidence linking it to the house of a current serving Labour councillor!!”

Conservative MP for Peterborough Paul Bristow also posted photos of the fly-tip, including one which showed a flyer in support of former Labour MP Lisa Forbes.

He told the Peterborough Telegraph last week: “As I understand, the fly-tip contains correspondence from a Labour

councillor. Perhaps they or the Labour group could organise a clean up to prevent the owner being landed with a bill.”

However, he was criticised on Twitter by his predecessor Ms Forbes, who told him: “One of your councillors has made a serious allegation against a Labour councillor for what appears to be political gain.

“I have advised (they) should contact the police to investigate. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

The PT was unable to contact Cllr Hussain before publishing its article last week so decided not to name him in the story.

Labour said Haroon, who has recently returned from university, “thought he was doing his dad a favour and paid for the removal from his own pocket whilst failing to tell him what he had agreed”.

Once the matter came to light, the party said it began an internal investigation into the fly-tip and that “Cllr Hussain realised some of it was his rubbish and reported the matter immediately to Labour group leader Shaz Nawaz”.

It said that Haroon and his brothers have now cleared the site of the waste and returned it to the family’s garage and will have it cleared in a skip, adding: “There has been no attempt to hide the facts and Mahboob responded to the internal investigation as soon as he realised what had happened to his own household waste.”

Under rules which began in April, residents in Peterborough can be fined up to £400 for “breaching their duty of care” when disposing of their household waste.

This includes people who “failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that they transferred the waste to an authorised person”.

Labour also said it wanted to raise awareness of the scam having heard of further people in Bretton being targeted in the same manner as Cllr Hussain’s family.

Peterborough City Council began investigating the fly-tip last week.

A spokesperson said on Tuesday: “We are currently looking into this and are in the process of speaking to all parties concerned.”

The fly-tipped rubbish which included waste form a Labour councillor’s household.