BCP Council does not keep record of flytipping locations

BCP Council told the Daily Echo it did not hold information in relation to illegal rubbish dumps by road.

This response came after a Freedom of Information request for the 10 roads with the most reports of flytipping over a 12-month period.

Responding to the request, the local authority said: "We do not hold the information by road. The expenditure for the disposal of fly-tipping is included within the overall disposal budget and it is not separated out."

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Broadstone Liberal Democrat councillor Vikki Slade said the failure to keep a record of the data was "utterly ridiculous".

In May, Cllr Slade voiced concerns over the council paying for an outsourced flytipping enforcement service on a one-year pilot.

Cllr Vikki Slade

"The whole idea was they were going to be dealing with flytipping," Cllr Slade told the Daily Echo.

"They were going to take control of this. You would have thought the first thing we would do if you are not already recording the data historically, get the data from the day that company starts.

"If they are not going out there to deal with it proactively and finding out where it has come from it is just going to get worse."

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Burton and Grange councillor Simon McCormack has seen repeated issues in the Ambury Lane area of his ward.

Cllr Simon McCormack

Cllr McCormack said he was "disappointed" the council was still not recording the data.

"We are never going to get to solving this problem unless we have this information – Ambury Lane would be a hot spot."

Rubbish at the West Hill car park in Bournemouth

Responding to Daily Echo questions on why the data was not collected, a BCP Council spokesperson said: "BCP Council are required to report information on flytipping incidents and actions taken each quarter to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs through the WasteDataFlow, including public reported incidents, and those reported by, and pro-actively cleared by, our own staff and contractors.

"These quarterly reports do not contain specific address or road information. They are required to include information such as; total number of recorded incidents, waste type and where it may have originated from. Nothing is disclosed regarding personal information regarding who has reported the incident. We also categorise by waste size.

“The council is proactively engaging with businesses to ensure that they have the necessary commercial waste contracts with licensed waste operators to dispose of their waste. A minority of businesses often dispose of their waste through unlicensed waste operators who then go on to fly-tip this waste.

"Also, individual flytips are investigated where possible to ascertain if the culprit can be identified and a warning or fine subsequently issued. Extra enforcement resource is targeted at hot-spot areas such as car-parks where flytipping frequently occurs. The company WISE has been engaged to assist the council with such investigations.

Police came across rubbish dumped in Arrowsmith Road, Poole. Picture: Poole Police

“The authority recognises the negative impacts that fly tipping can have on the local environmental quality and its cleansing teams work tirelessly across the borough to mitigate against them. These cleansing teams are proactively acting upon reports received as well as historic knowledge of areas.

"As part of the BCP Council Cleaner, Greener, Safer project we will be introducing smarter ways of gathering data relating to flytipping so that these can be mapped to record them as areas that may benefit from the targeting of additional resources.”