Hundreds of fly-tippers dumping Wolverhampton every month

Wolverhampton council is dealing with around 234 instances of fly-tipping every month, new figures show.

This equates to an average of eight cases a day where litter louts are dumping litter, furniture, fridges and freezers on the city's streets, leaving the authority with a costly clean-up bill to tackle the problem.

The figures have been revealed in a report which will be discussed by the city's vibrant and sustainable city scrutiny panel on Thursday (14).

They show that in the first 10 months on 2015/16, 4,851 street cleansing issues were reported.

These included a monthly average of 234 cases of fly-tipping, 72 cases of littering, 30 cases of dead animals, seven cases of graffiti and six cases of parks vandalism, damage and security.

[youtube title="Two laughing fly-tippers dumped a mountain of rubbish right in front of a secret camera set up to catch louts who do just that"][/youtube]

In 2015/16 the council's public realm cleansing team has attended 2,359 reports of fly tipping which included 1,335 items of furniture and 576 fridges and freezers, has removed 4,000 tons of litter, collected 363 dead animals, cleaned up after 117 road traffic collisions and collected 3,901 syringes from 144 locations.

Wolverhampton council spokesman Oliver Bhurrut, said: "The two council tips are open seven days a week between them, so there is no excuse for fly tipping.

"We also provide a garden waste collection service alongside our normal refuse collection services.

"Fly-tipping is a lazy and selfish crime which costs law-abiding taxpayers a lot of money to clear up.

"The council runs regular initiatives to tackle the issue of littering and fly-tipping as part of our Cleaner, Greener, Better Wolverhampton campaign.

"And thanks to the efforts of our enforcement team we have recently seen a number of fly-tipping offenders caught and fined.

"The message to anyone thinking of fly tipping in Wolverhampton is that you run the very real risk of being prosecuted, fined and publicly named and shamed."

Last year the Express & Star revealed that the authority had 4,427 incidents of fly-tipping in 2014/15, costing the council £179,174 in clearance costs.

Just last month a mother and daughter were ordered by a court to pay more than £400 each after they were caught dumping their rubbish on the former Stryker's site.

Sukhdeep Shoker, 31, of South Street, Wolverhampton, and her mother Joginder Sunnerd who lives in Essex, pleaded guilty to three counts of depositing garden waste without an environmental permit on land where the bowling alley used to be based on August 1 last year.

They were ordered to each pay a fine of £73, a victim surcharge of £20 and costs to the prosecution of £319.

Earlier this year the city's environment boss, Councillor Steve Evans, said the council was looking at extending the powers of litter wardens so they could use cameras to spy on fly tippers and litter louts in a bid to tackle the spiralling problem of rubbish being dumped across Wolverhampton.

Council bosses are giving staff extra powers after they spent nearly £180,000 last year clearing up waste.