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Shropshire ‘fly-tipping’ costs taypayers £100,000
Friday 15th October 2010, 11:29AM BST.
Shropshire taxpayers have had to fork out almost £100,000 to cover the cost of removing items dumped on the county’s streets in suspected fly-tipping incidents, new figures showed today.
The figures from the Environmental Maintenance team at Shropshire Council showed it cost the authority £88,839 to remove smaller items and a further £7,168 for Veolia to remove large items under the terms of its waste management contract with the council.
Tim Sneddon, Shropshire Council’s head of environmental maintenance for the central area, said about 50 per cent of reported fly-tipping was bags of household rubbish left by residents next to public bins.
He said: “Domestic waste can be anything from white goods to tyres and garden waste but the vast majority of fly-tipping is people putting out bags of household waste by litter bins.
“It’s people not fully utilising the recycling scheme, probably they don’t realise the problem with doing that is if you put a bag of rubbish next to a bin a cat could come along and rip it open and then the litter blows all up the street.
“On the face of it what they’ve done is quite small but we have to come and clean it all up.”
Mr Sneddon said people caught fly-tipping could also be handed a £75 fixed penalty notice.
He said: “If we catch people fly-tipping we will prosecute them straight away.
“If it’s a misunderstanding we will work to educate people before we look at enforcement.”
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I wonder over what time period are these figures relevant to and how much has been reclaimed through prosecutions?
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“suspected fly-tipping incidents”???
Fly-tipping is a filthy, anti-social and potentially dangerous activity carried out by criminal vermin – where does the word “suspected” enter into it?
Perhaps the owner of the armchair in your photo didn’t know it had escaped from their front room?
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does this include the bill for landfilling it all too ? or is it just the cost of the guys picking it up. Because if not this is probably only half the cost
either way it should be made up by fines on people who litter NOT taking off my taxes as a law abiding citizen why should i pay
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years ago councils used to have skips so that anybodey could take rubish to the skip now its fenced of you need a ticket if you use a van a nice big que to get in the council have made it that hard to get rid of rubbish its easyer for people to dump it at the side of the road
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A small fortune is spent on tracking and trying to trace these tippers through designated teams etc and yet they have failed to prosecute more than half a dozen in the last 12 months . May I suggest here we may have a worthwhile cut in order to save money as they have over decades achieved NOTHING.
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they dont provide any where for white van man to legally take the stuff thats the problem, they could make money for the council on legal waste disposal for businesses instead they cost us money mopping it all up
this could save the jobs of 5 or 6 fronline workers on meals on wheels, rubbish collections and care homes which they are cutting
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what about the non jobs like “fly tipping prevention officer” and streetscene managers, they are costing us more like a million pounds a year, this is further evidence that the public sector has failed, sack them all and get private companies in to do the litter if they get a bonus for everything they clear up the place would be spotless not like these lazy overpaid gold plated pension work shy public sector workers
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