Warning to fly tippers as Wellington layby turns into rubbish dump

7:30am Sunday 2nd December 2012 in Wellington & Wiveliscombe Photograph of the Author By Phil Hill

Steffan Jennings with some of the dumped rubbish. Steffan Jennings with some of the dumped rubbish.

FLY tippers have been warned they could be put out of business after a layby has been virtually turned into a rubbish dump.

Stefan Jennings says he has called the council on numerous occasions to clear items dumped in Tone Hill, Tonedale, Wellington, but says every time the waste is removed more is left there.

“It’s not just that it looks ugly, but it’s also close to the river, and they’ll leave stuff like paint and other toxic items,” said Mr Jennings.

“Every time I call the council the DLO comes out and clears it away, but then more gets dumped.

“It’s almost as if the DLO and I are providing a service for the fly tippers.

“I wish there was a way of stopping it because I don’t want to spend my life dealing with fly tipping.

“I think it’s a few people repeatedly doing it.”

A Taunton Deane Council spokeswoman said offenders could be fined up to £1,000.

Cllr Ken Hayward, executive member for environmental services, said: “We have zero tolerance on fly tipping. It’s environmental crime perpetuated by selfish people, and there can be no excuse.

“We live in a beautiful part of the country and want to keep it that way.

“Let anyone who may be thinking of fly tipping be in no doubt of the council’s determination to gather evidence and prosecute cases of this environmental crime.

“Fines can be hefty – enough to put a small business under in these hard times – so the message is simple: don’t do it!”

Comments(15)

Dr Dave says...
7:56am Sun 2 Dec 12

There's a simple solution, install a covert CCTV camera with night vision and catch them in the act! The resulting fine would soon pay for the system!

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Mike Rigby says...
10:14am Sun 2 Dec 12

Good idea, Dr Dave. The Environment Agency does have these. I'll have a word with them about this hotspot. It would also help if the Council spokesman quoted had given the correct maximum fine, which is £50,000 not £1,000 and imprisonment of up to 5 years. It's no coincidence that the doubling in flytipping exactly matches the introduction of fees and closures at Household Waste Recycling Centres in Somerset.

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Thurza says...
2:53pm Sun 2 Dec 12

By the amount of rubbish that appears to be there this cannot be used as a lay by so why not close it off completely so there is no access . More bags of rubbish on Langford Common this weekend again.

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Mark1970 says...
10:39pm Sun 2 Dec 12

Dr Dave, have you seen normal CCTV? The quality of it is reasonably poor during daylight let alone at night time.

If you have night vision CCTV then it would be blinded by light, so if a vehicle was driving directly towards it, then it would be rendered useless.

The same as if a light is shone at it.

So it would be a total waste of time and money.

The problem is still down to the tips being closed at certain times, and also the fact that they charge for some products to be dumped.

By the looks of what is in the picture, it is possibly from someone who is doing house clearance removals and then dumping.

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What is Happening says...
8:47am Mon 3 Dec 12

Dont take this the wrong way. But if our super council, hadnt put charges on at local tips, this would not have been such an issue. Where councils have charge for local tips, fly tipping has increased. So where is the cost saving coming from????

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topcataj says...
12:26pm Mon 3 Dec 12

Flytipping, though the more visible problem made worse by the recycling centre changes, is not that big a deal in cost terms compared to other issues.

Compared to the amount of waste handled county wide, the amount of flytipping is small, though of course has an effect beyond pure economics.

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topcataj says...
12:35pm Mon 3 Dec 12

And though I agree that cutting the recycling centres hours was a bad idea, it does seem strange to be blaming the council for individuals and/or private firms flytipping....

With the way things are at the moment I expect the council would be blamed if we had an earthquake or something...

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Mike Rigby says...
12:49pm Mon 3 Dec 12

Of course fly-tipping is the responsibility of the idiots tipping the materials but local government has a responsibility for the framework in which such behaviour occurs. Fly-tipping doubled when these charges were introduced and, despite challenge, the Council has failed to provide any alternative explanation of this explosive increase other than the charges and closures at HWRCs. And let's not forget that civic amenity sites, as they were then called, were introduced in the 1970s specifically to deal with the problem of fly-tipping. It should therefore come as no surprise that when access to them is restricted, fly-tipping increases. A further spin-off which does have significant cost implications is the fact that many people now put their hardcore (any brick or concrete) in their wheelie bins. The waste in your wheelie bin costs the Council £99 per tonne to dispose of. The skips of hardcore at the HWRCs cost the Council £27 per tonne to recycle. But because the public is now charged several pounds to deposit even the smallest amount of hardcore, guess what? It now goes in the wheelie bin costing the Council 4 times as much. This is not sound economics and our Councils are responsible for these changes in behaviours.

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Useacarpark.com says...
2:02pm Tue 4 Dec 12

£2.90 is the minimum charge for disposing of hardcore at a waste disposal site. What I hate about these charges is that this rubble is processed and then sold for use as a hardcore sub base. Why charge us for it? Metal disposed at the council is an easy money maker. It is now also possible to make electricity using food waste. They could even produce compost to sell direct from the sites. The council should take away the charges and revert to the old opening times, rather than spending money clearing up after fly tippers, that way they could look at ways at creating money from waste. I understand though in order to do this they would have to fire the lazy and unhelpful numpties that currently work at the disposal sites (mainly Wellington)

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topcataj says...
3:41pm Tue 4 Dec 12

For once, Mike, I can agree with you. The cost of waste going into landfill that would previously have been recycled is a bigger issue, in economic terms, than fly tipping. It's not difficult to double a relatively low number, but saying fly tipping has doubled has a better ring to it for your needs I feel. Makes for a more sensational headline at least.

Useacarpark, from what I've heard, your experience of staff at recycling centres is different to other peoples, but then these things do vary.
And in answer to you question "Why charge us for it?", the answer is simply to raise money. Whether right or wrong, whether logical or not, the desire is to raise funds and help towards balancing the difficult budget we keep hearing about.

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FreeSpeech? says...
5:04pm Tue 4 Dec 12

Useacarpark.com wrote:
£2.90 is the minimum charge for disposing of hardcore at a waste disposal site. What I hate about these charges is that this rubble is processed and then sold for use as a hardcore sub base. Why charge us for it? Metal disposed at the council is an easy money maker. It is now also possible to make electricity using food waste. They could even produce compost to sell direct from the sites. The council should take away the charges and revert to the old opening times, rather than spending money clearing up after fly tippers, that way they could look at ways at creating money from waste. I understand though in order to do this they would have to fire the lazy and unhelpful numpties that currently work at the disposal sites (mainly Wellington)
Yes they could make money from the recyclables, but alas our glorious county council decided to sell off Wyvern Waste to Viridor so I suspect any profit made goes to their shareholders or offsets their operating costs which I bet are a lot more than Wyverns's used to be.

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Mike Rigby says...
5:47pm Tue 4 Dec 12

topcataj. I am amazed that you could ever disagree with my common sense approach to all things :-)

407 flytipping incidents in a year is not a relatively low number. It's more than one a day. And that's what we experienced BEFORE the charges and closures were introduced. In the 12 months since, we have seen 681 incidents in Taunton Deane alone with clean-up costs doubling from £11,000 to £22,000 per year.

You're right, it's certainly a good headline; one that wouldn't exist if it weren't for the short-sighted changes to the way the HWRCs operate.

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topcataj says...
12:39pm Wed 5 Dec 12

£20k a year compared to the cost of landfill isn't a headline.

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Mike Rigby says...
1:38pm Wed 5 Dec 12

.....which is why I've repeatedly highlighted the landfill costs issue as well as the 274 additional fly-tipping events @topcataj :-)

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Mike Rigby says...
1:38pm Wed 5 Dec 12

.....which is why I've repeatedly highlighted the landfill costs issue as well as the 274 additional fly-tipping events @topcataj :-)

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