Fly-tipping headache as Wolverhampton City Council sees 234 cases a month

This equates to 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 were revealed in a report which will be discussed by the city's Vibrant and Sustainable City Scrutiny Panel on Thursday. They show that in the first 10 months over 2015/16, 4,851 street cleaning 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.

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.

"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 littering and fly-tipping as part of our Cleaner, Greener, Better Wolverhampton campaign. And thanks to 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.