Courts asked to get tougher on fly-tippers
COURTS have been told to get tougher over fly-tipping in North Tyneside, as a council boss raised concerns about the “proportionality” of fines.
This came at this week’s meeting of the authority’s environment sub committee, where councillors heard an update on the borough’s bid to tackle illegally-dumped waste. Flytipping is defined as the “illegal deposit of any waste on to land that does not have a licence to accept it”.
Richie Mitchell, communities and public space protection manager, said that the council has the power to issue a £400 fixed penalty notice to anyone caught fly-tipping, or it could take them to court.
“We have the option of issuing fixed penalty notice for fly-tipping and we can deal with it on the spot or make the decision to proceed (in court) instead,” he said.
But he said that a prolific fly-tipper recently taken to court by the council got off with a £500 fine.
Mr Mitchell continued: “One individual who fly-tipped on 11 occasions went to court and they were given a £500 fine.
“The proportionality there of pulling together that work and evidence when the fine was little more than a fixed penalty notice.
“We’re doing work with courts to understand fly-tipping. In my ideal world someone (convicted) would do 200 hours picking up fly-tipping in the borough, but we’re working with the probation authorities in the coming year.”
This comes as shock government data revealed that there are 174 cases of fly-tipping across the region every day.
Figures published by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) reveal there were 63,646 incidents of fly-tipping in the region in 2018/19 – or 174 every day.
The total included 13,428 cases where people simply dumped black bags full of household waste in the streets, 3,404 fly-tipped fridges and other white goods and 93 involving dead animals.
There were also 1,226 cases of tyres being dumped, 350 involving vehicle parts, and even 125 where clinical waste was fly-tipped.
The total number of cases in the North East was up from 62,037 in 2017/18 and is the highest number since local figures were first recorded in 2012/13. That year, there were 56,748.