Agenda item

(Director of Neighbourhoods) to consider the attached report.

The Assistant Director, Neighbourhood Services, Mr Nolan and the Environment and Neighbourhood Manager, Mr Gardiner, introduced the report on fly-tipping clearance and enforcement. It was noted that this was a problem that was growing. The Environment & Neighbourhoods (EN) Team were responsible for enforcing waste law in the district. They log all incidents of fly-tipping and prioritise investigations to try and trace the source of the waste and fly-tipper. They took as an example Laundry Lane that was constantly being fly-tipped and constantly being cleared by the district or the County Council. Waste has also been dumped on private land and although the Council has the powers to force the land owner to clear the tip they did have some sympathy with them on this.  They were also getting pressure form the private land owners to help them clear up the tipped areas.

Councillor Bassett sympathised with their problem and considered that some sort of covert work needed to be carried out here. He noted that some land owners have had to spend £5,000 clearing away fly-tips on their land. This was a difficult problem. Officers needed some sort of discretion for instance to allow the landowner to pay us to clear up their land at a reasonable discounted rate on an exceptional basis. More enforcement and more covert surveillance was needed. There should be a purge on fly-tipping especially in troubled areas and help with CCTV for private landowners. The only way to stop it was to catch them.

Mr Nolan replied that it was very difficult to put in CCTV on rural roads, in order to be effective you needed good quality images/equipment and they were resource intensive. They should ideally be placed near a power source, if not the batteries would have to be changed on a regular basis. He liked the idea of having a purge on an area or, if possible, blocking off a road. He noted that we could not erect overt fake cameras since a recent court case. The installation of warning signs was also raised. However, these strategies were likely to just move the problem to another nearby area.

Councillor Jennings asked about best practice and what did other authorities do about this. Mr Nolan said that we were with the national body that dealt with CCTV and we were ahead on the use of best practice.

Councillor Bassett noted that Town and Parish Councils may want our help. He was told that we would always help and advise local councils if asked.

Councillor Bassett asked if we could charge for removing fly-tips at cost price without taking any profit. He was told that would be up to councillors to decide that change in policy.

Councillor Bassett raised a question regarding Essex County Council (ECC) asking about pushing waste blocking roads into a ditch. He was told that EFDC would pursue this with ECC if ECC Highways did so as an emergency to unblock or remove a hazard but did not return and collect it later.

Councillor Patel suggested we put in Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras at both ends of a road and log the vans that use it. We could use the money we spend on clearing away the waste to buy this equipment and hopefully catch the perpetrators. Mr Nolan said that in order to convict they needed evidence that was ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’.  Which meant that there was limited potential for CCTV unless it was in the right spot to capture significant detail of someone fly-tipping.

The Director of Neighbourhoods noted that issues of policy needed to be addressed here. Were members minded to go back to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee seeking more money from the Cabinet? Also, what were their priorities on this, such as meeting the cost for private land owners?

Councillor Waller was sympatric to the land owners, but EFDC paying for clearance would not deal with the root of the problem. What was the maximum penalty that could be given? He was told that it was now unlimited and a recent case had seen a fly-tipper being sent to jail for four years. Councillor Waller said he would like to see us catching the perpetrators of this crime and getting money back from them.

Councillor Brady commented that they would also like to help landowners as we could not catch all the perpetrators.

Councillor Bassett asked if we could allow them to take their waste to our dumps. It was clarified that “dumps” (Recycling Centres) are owned/managed by the ECC and not EFDC. Mr Gardiner explained that victims of fly-tipping could take household waste to ECC Recycling Centres. EFDC could assist victims to liaise with ECC to try and ensure waste was not turned away as sites did not accept commercial waste.  

Councillor Jennings suggested working in partnership with other Local Authorities and providing joint sites for people to use. He was told that this could run into millions of pounds to set up and run. But sites were already available but people did not want to pay to use them.

RESOLVED:

On consideration of the current position regarding the clearance of fly-tipped waste the Committee suggested that:

1)    Consideration should be given to help landowners by charging cost prices for the removal of tipped waste;

2)    There was no support for providing additional funding to enable EFDC to provide a fly-tipping waste clearance service from private land; and

3)    Members supported the continued enforcement to catch perpetrators.