Fly-tipping mountain costing Bridgend taxpayers £178,000 a year

Written by Peter Black and published in Seaside News August 2007 on Thu 26th Jul 2007

Fly-tipping is scarring the face of urban and rural Wales, costing taxpayers millions of pounds to clear up.

Figures from the Welsh Assembly Research Service reveal that there were more than 55,000 cases of fly-tipping across Wales in the last financial year. The total cost of clearing this material fell on local Councils, who between them spent £2.9 million on this activity.

As would be expected the three largest Councils in Wales top the list with, for example, 7,401 incidents in Swansea costing £414,000 and 3,748 incidents in Rhondda Cynon Taf at a total cost of £155,000. Bridgend tackled 1,074 incidents at a cost of £178,000.

Fly tipping creates misery and can blight communities. It is an anti-social activity that undermines community life, can attract vermin and costs taxpayers huge amounts of money each year to put right.

It affects both urban and rural areas equally and yet, despite the huge effort by local Councils and private landowners to clean it up, it results in very few prosecutions. We need a more effective enforcement regime but we also need greater vigilance by the public and a willingness to testify or co-operate in prosecutions. We should not have to tolerate such activity.