The Chronicle (South Tyneside and Durham)
Fly-tippers reported yet problem persists
FLY-TIPPING is the top environmental challenge faced by North east local authorities. It’s a crime, a nuisance and a hazard, with significant costs.
Last year Newcastle Council reported 16,150 cases of flytipping including dumped carpets, mattresses and more recently a ton of garden rubble left on Kenton Dene! Half a million fly-tipping incidents are reported in England every year. According to the campaign group ‘Keep Britain Tidy’ twothirds of all recorded fly-tips are made up of household waste. Fly-tipping blights local neighbourhoods.
In the last year a range of enforcement measures have been taken across the city to tackle littering, dumped settees and other forms of fly-tipping. In March 2020 alone there were 86 convictions, 200 hours of community payback, four prison sentences imposed by magistrates and 230 £75 fines.
The city has the highest level of prosecutions of fly-tipping in the country. The message is simple to thoughtless perpetrators – mess up the city and you’ll pay.
Last year the Council spent £2m picking up 7,000 tones of rubbish discarded across Newcastle’s streets and public spaces. An extra £1.2m is being invested this year to boost the cleaning programme with 20 more front-line staff to tackle litter and fly-tips.
Getting the basics right is what residents want.
The council – its staff and elected members – recognise this on-going problem. Council workers can’t be everywhere at once. They need help from local groups and residents to tackle the scourge of rubbish and flytips. Despite money going into tackling fly-tipping – education, monitoring, removal and enforcement – the problem persists. There’s a clear need for some research to be carried out as to why a minority of people choose to fly-tip – starting with householders. What are the “behavioural drivers’’ that make some individuals chose to dump their waste, or pass it on to an illegal operator.
COUN STEPHEN Lambert, Coun Ged Bell, Coun Anya Durrant, Kenton Ward, Newcastle City Council