Shropshire farmer tells of high cost over fly-tipping frustration
[gallery] Sheets of asbestos lie alongside dirty mattresses, broken beds, chairs, a fridge and a discarded suitcase.
Not far away are two battered sofas, another mattress, bits of carpet, a smashed TV stand and the remains of some cupboards. The eyesores are an all too familiar sight to 50-year-old Chris Inett since his land became a makeshift rubbish dump targeted by fly-tippers.
They litter the 550 acres his family has farmed at Furnace Grange, Trescott, near Bridgnorth, since 1934 – and he fears there is little or nothing he can do to stop it.
Mr Inett became so frustrated he once took the law into his own hands and dumped 150 tyres left by somebody else on his land.
In June, he was fined £2,000 by magistrates after admitting fly tipping but the total bill was nearly £5,000 when court and his legal costs were added.
Estimates suggest it would cost him around £500 a month to have the mounds of refuse moved to proper dumps because he cannot get a licence to transport and dispose of it himself – even if he had the time to do so.
Mr Inett explained: "We have a huge problem with fly-tipping. People dump everything from fridges, settees and sofas to garden waste, builders rubble and even the remains of cannabis farms.
"The council will not help us remove it because it is on our land and so it is our problem to solve even though it was not our rubbish in the first place."
His fields sit alongside country lanes with neither fences nor hedges to separate them from the grass verge and the cost of erecting barriers would be prohibitively expensive.
The problem came to a head at the start of the year when three massive loads of tyres were dumped at the farm.
Frustrated Mr Inett used a fork lift truck to load them up and leave them in Bennetts Lane, a rugged stretch of road running alongside one of his fields that can only be navigated by a 4x4.
The council knew he was to blame because he had earlier asked them to remove the tyres. The case cost him dear and he had to pay a further £500 for the tyres to be removed professionally although the biggest tyre still remains on his land as an unwanted souvenir because he refused to pay the extra £150 demanded to shift it.
