A crackdown on selfish fly-tippers is long overdue with current penalties not enough to deter them - Jayne Dowle

Rats scurry off when footsteps approach, burrowing their grimy way into abandoned mattresses and bin bags bulging with builders’ waste and rotting food.

Drive a few miles out of the town centre and every few yards along certain country lanes, someone will have dumped a bag of something unmentionable, a sofa spilling out its guts, a broken bicycle or an item so degraded it’s become unrecognisable.

And it’s not just Barnsley. Across our region, whether in a fancy village, brand-new housing estate or back lane, unlawful rubbish is piling up.

Take a look on any one of those online neighbourhood forums and you’ll see ‘dumping’ and ‘fly-tipping’ right at the top of the discussion boards.

We’re all sick of it. And failure by the authorities to deal with it is making us sick and tired of waiting for something to be done, once and for all.

Quite apart from causing a potential traffic hazard, many of these illegal piles are dangerous to wildlife, livestock and passing dogs. Across the road from my house on the road near the field, I once found a full bag of used needles, syringes and other drugs paraphernalia, obviously tossed casually out of a passing car window. It is this entrenched and selfish attitude, that the environment doesn’t matter, that needs to be tackled.

So Bradford councillor Sarah Ferriby is absolutely right to call for tougher sentences for fly-tippers this week. She is backing calls for new guidelines to deal with this destructive and dangerous crime, which blights our towns and countryside, harms wildlife and causes pollution and poses a threat to public health.

And, according to the Local Government Association (LGA), it is getting worse. Much worse. In 2020/21, local authorities in England dealt with 1.13 million fly-tipping incidents, an increase of 16 per cent from the 980,000 reported in 2019/20.

In April, former Environment Minister Jo Churchill announced a range of Government measures intended to combat fly-tipping, with great fanfare.

However, against this staggering 16 per cent increase in incidents, the sum of £450,000 awarded to councils across England to tackle fly-tipping in the worst-affected locations seems derisory; it’s intended to include more fixed cover and overt CCTV cameras, rapid deployment cameras with car number plate recognition and online educational initiatives for those fined.

While ever the dumpers get away with it, they will continue to do so. What this former minister and other politicians before her have failed to grasp is that those who fly-tip have callous disregard for the law.

Ministers could pass a law that allowed official civic amenity sites to open 24/7 every day of the year, but these offenders aren’t interested in driving nicely to their local recycling centre and queuing up patiently to deposit their unwanted items in the correct bin.

They would rather speed off to the nearest country lane or steal down a quiet street late at night and just dump their stuff without a backward glance or a twinge of guilt.

And others will follow, because the penalties doled out are not severe enough to set an example.

Whilst councils can issue fines of up to £400 for fly-tipping without even the need to go to court, research by the LGA reveals that the average fine for fly-tipping issued by UK courts in 2020/21 was just £335.

This is mind-boggling, when you consider that the maximum penalties include a fine of up to £50,000 and imprisonment.

Something is not adding up here. The LGA says that fly-tipping costs councils more than £50m a year to clear up. Surely some of this cost should be offset by imposing the highest possible fines, and bringing all possible perpetrators to justice? After all, it’s us, the council taxpayers, who are not only footing the bill, but having to live with the mess too.

And here is the crux of the issue. Fly-tipping, like vehicle crime, garden thefts and countless other offences which are (not) dealt with by the police, involves too much paperwork to process, says the LGA’s report: “However, prosecuting fly-tippers often requires time-consuming and laborious investigations, with a high threshold of proof. In addition to the low fines, councils are often left out of pocket from court action as their costs are not fully repaid.”

Well, surely this inequitable situation can be addressed with the right kind of political will? Coun David Renard, environment spokesperson at the LGA, says that without higher fines for the worst kind of fly-tipping offences, criminals will remain undeterred.