West Midlands man who blamed TikTok post for fly-tipping fined by magistrates

A Birmingham fly-tipper dumped bags of rubbish on a city road after seeing a TikTok post advertising the location as a collection point during the bin strikes.

Jawad Kanwal, of Gowan Road, Birmingham, pleaded guilty to a charge of breaching the Environmental Protection Act 1990 following an incident on West End Park Road on May 2 last year.

At a hearing on Thursday, October 22, Birmingham Magistrates Court was told CCTV cameras captured a car pulling up to the location on that date.

Peter Cruickshank, prosecuting on behalf of the Birmingham City Council, said the images showed a passenger getting out of the car to deposit two black bags of rubbish while the driver stayed inside.

Checks found the car was registered to Kanwal and the council then wrote to him requesting information.

Mr Cruickshank said Kanwal later emailed the authority and confirmed he had committed the offences and he was issued with a fixed penalty notice of £1,000 which has not been paid.

Kanwal, who represented himself in court, said he had written to the council to apologise for the incident, adding he regretted his actions.

But he said he also explained he was unemployed at the time of the offence and had no income to pay the £1,000 fine and had requested an extension.

He said: “At that time, there were no bin collections in Birmingham. There was specific information on TikTok saying there would be collection points for the rubbish to be collected.

“It said West End Park Road was one of the collection points.”

Magistrates fined Kanwal £250 and ordered him to pay a £100 victim surcharge and a contribution towards prosecution costs of £650.