Fly-tipped
A week ago, a truck fly-tipped a load of waste onto the little road I can see from the back of my house. They did this blatantly and in broad daylight on Saturday morning. Within a couple of minutes, they were gone.
What looked like general household waste was eventually revealed to be a large quantity of building crap - rubble, plaster, and other solid and heavy debris. I posted a photo on our local community forum. Various people thought they saw the truck but didn’t get the licence number. Others pitched in saying they thought the licence plate was either covered, removed or fake. Somebody managed to get a photo of the truck making its getaway.
Some residents of the mews called the police and the council, but nobody came . Eventually, some did their best to pile the waste to the side of the road, so at least they could get access with their vehicles.
A few days later, a truck came to clear the waste, but enough debris remained that some other residents ended up scraping up the remaining crap off the road.
Fly-tipping is a massive problem in the UK, and unscrupulous people get away with it all the time, despite it being a serious criminal offence for which you can be prosecuted. The courts have various powers available to them to tackle fly-tipping, including imprisonment, substantial fines of up to £50,000 orders to pay costs and an order to deprive rights to a vehicle used to commit the offence.
In 2016/17 more than one million incidences of fly-tipping were dealt with by councils in England. The estimated cost of clearing up this waste was over £58 million.
