I guess that fly tipping is a pretty big problem the whole country over and I see it often down on the Somerset Levels. However, this little snippet from our local BBC News site is pretty grim. I hope that they catch them sharpish and lock them up.
Not just a total disregard for the environment, but also a total disregard for people's health.
BBC.CO.UK A dodgy property developer is renovating the house next door to me. We are detached from it with a small area of pavement between the properties that the neighbour owns some of. They had a skip on this land.
Easter Sunday, my wife is in bed not feeling very well. There is a loud thumping against our gable wall, then somebody smacks the skip with a hammer, rings like a giant bell.
I go out to ask them to keep the noise down. Get a load of arsyness in response.
Then I realise what they are actually doing - they have a pile of asbestos flu pipes piled up against my building and they are smashing them to bits in public and stuffing them into plastic bin bags and then into their car boot.
Obviously I report them to environmental health at the council, who couldn't be less interested. They log an out of hours working complaint and tell me to report asbestos to the health and safety executive. They need photographic evidence. Too late for that.
So these scroates have obviously driven off and fly tipped it somewhere, and the local authority didn't give a sh!t.
and the local authority didn't give a sh!t.
Underfunded, understaffed and unglamorous work. They're so overwhelmed by the scale of it that they don't even know where to begin and even if they do succeed in bringing a case to court it's invariably a warning or a small fine. Since a lot of it is organised crime, they're always 5 steps ahead of any council which only adds to the sense of despair within authorities that they're outgunned and outmatched at every turn.
A school near my Mum routinely has a line of coaches outside, all idling their engines for an hour. Multiple complaints to the school, the coach company and to the council. A council official turned up one day and said "oh it's OK, the pollution blows away from the school". Could not have been less interested. That's the pervading attitude across many authorities.
I was out on the gravel bike the other day and someone had fly tipped a boat on a dead end country lane. An actual boat. I'll find a pic.
Is that a Bullseye prize?
I'm sure there was a recent illegal dump where responsibility for cleaning it up lay with the local council, but the cost of the clean up was multiple times the councils entire annual budget.
It's so cheap to dump stuff and so cripplingly expensive to then tidy up afterwards that councils have no chance. The EA and Police don't come off looking good in some of the high profile cases either, there's usually a timeline of:
- Locals notice dozens of rubbish laden HGVs driving through their village and coming back empty
- They realise there's an illegal dump and report it to council/police/EA
- Police: "That's a civil matter sir". Council: "That's for the EA". EA: "You need to report to the police"
- Repeat for 6 months
- Eventually the MP gets involved and someone gets an order banning the (already illegal!?) dumping
- Dumping continues
- Police/EA act after another 6 months of dumping by writing a letter reminding the land owner of the court order
- Dumping continues
- Site is now entirely full of waste and dumpers move on
- Police and EA say the dumping stopping shows their strong action in the form of court orders is working
- Council is left to go bankrupt trying to clear it up while locals have their children chased by giant rats and swarmed by flies.
I was out on the gravel bike the other day and someone had fly tipped a boat on a dead end country lane. An actual boat. I'll find a pic.
That’s impressive, much more so that the usual builders waste I find dumped on my travels.
I’ve just had to report another load of fly-tipped rubbish on The Ridgeway close to us.
I’m starting to worry that the guy at the council who replies to all these fly-tipping reports will start to think it’s me dumping this shit as I seem to be sending these report forms to him so often 🤣
I was out on the gravel bike the other day and someone had fly tipped a boat on a dead end country lane. An actual boat. I'll find a pic.
That’s impressive, much more so that the usual builders waste I find dumped on my travels.
I’ve just had to report another load of fly-tipped rubbish on The Ridgeway close to us.
I’m starting to worry that the guy at the council who replies to all these fly-tipping reports will start to think it’s me dumping this shit as I seem to be sending these report forms to him so often 🤣
It's lucky you don't use your real name...