News of another Croydon success which council leader Tony Newman will doubtless never mention and which will never appear amid the council’s propaganda and falsehoods on their website has dropped into the in-box at Inside Croydon Towers this morning.
Croydon leads the country for fly-tips
Croydon is the fourth worst place in the whole of England for fly-tipping.
Only the cities of Leeds and Liverpool and north London borough Haringey had more incidents of fly-tipping than Croydon in 2017-2018, according to government figures.
There were 19,198 fly-tips reported in Croydon in a single year, 2017-2018, a figure which dwarfs the numbers which the council does like to publicise – the prosecutions and fixed penalty notices issued in its “clampdown” against fly-tipping offenders.
In February 2018, the council published proudly that it had managed to make 200 such prosections – in nearly four years, since May 2014.
That’s an average of 50 each year – or about 0.0025 per cent of the number of fly-tips, based on those 2017-2018 figures.
The slogans and T-shirts of Stuart Collins (right) have failed to stem the tide of fly-tipping in Croydon
And it might be worse than that.
To help bump up its fixed penalty notice and prosecution figures, the council has included in those 200 “successes” a significant number of people who were fined for simply dropping a cigarette butt.
In some respects, the council is a victim of its own success, the high number of reported fly-tips in Croydon being at least in part a reflection on the Town Hall’s campaign to encourage the public to report such offences when they encounter them.
That this is a particular problem in Croydon is suggested by the fact that no other south London or Surrey local authority appears in the top 10 of England’s fly-tipping hot spots, though the issue of slovenly and anti-social behaviour is growing across the country: the number of fixed penalty notices handed out by councils in England increased by 20 per cent in 2017-2018.
The sheer scale of the problem in Croydon demonstrated by those figures also suggests that the five-year-long campaign of “Don’t Mess With Croydon” slogans and T-shirts, led by Labour’s council deputy leader Stuart Collins, has failed to clean up our streets.
The statistics were issued today ahead of World Environment Day (yes, it’s a “thing”) this Wednesday, June 5.
It is not the council which litters the streets, however, and survey findings reflect very poorly on the not-so-great British public.
The survey, conducted on behalf of a furniture retailer, has discovered that 25 per cent of people stated that they did not realise that dumping your rubbish on the street is illegal. Seriously. WTAF.
Bin and gone: Croydon’s streets are not getting any cleaner
With new financial penalties put in place in January this year, any householder who fails to pass their waste to a licensed carrier and whose waste is found fly-tipped would face penalties of up to £400.
Government data showed that local authorities in England dealt with 998,000 fly-tipping incidents in 2017-2018, a similar amount to the previous year.
In the survey, conducted on behalf of Furniture Choice, 39 per cent of the public said that they think councils should provide easier alternatives to fly-tipping. In Croydon, the council introduced a free bulk waste disposal service last year. The only snag is that there is currently a three-month wait in some areas for the council contractors to collect the booked bulky waste collection.
As an alternative, Furniture Choice has created an online tool with more than 800 furniture recycling and donation centres across the country, which helps people find their nearest location in which to take their unwanted furniture and white goods.
“Fly-tipping causes a devastating impact on the environment and is expensive to clear, so it is a major concern that incidents are increasing in England,” Tom Obbard, a Furniture Choice director, said today.
“More needs to be done on encouraging people to use recycling and donation sites instead of illegally discarding their waste.”
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I reported a site in S Croydon that had become a rubbish tipping site recently (not on the public highway, nor Council-owned, but a left-over bit of land, and I was impressed with the speed with which the council got the land cleared. I can’t imagine most other councils dealing with a site like this so quickly. I also reported a rubbish loaded tipper which I guessed would disappear one dark and wet night and return, miraculously empty, later that night. The council took my concern on board, and took action to avoid such a scenrio, so again , I was impressed.
As your article says, caring Croydon folk have embraced the “Don’t mess with Croydon ” campaign, and know that it is worth their expenditure of time as the council do act on every call.
Croydon is mix of town and country, and sadly, there are many back alleys and urban back lanes where fly tippers can get away with a quick tip, and rural fringe country lanes, likewise, leaving a £1000 clear up. The Borough (and that means you and me) picks up the tab. The more fines and vehicle confiscations that take place, the more the tippers will get the message that tipping can be expensive. Fly tipping is an expression of disdain for the reasonable rules of society, not to forget the despoilation of our beautiful planet, so I welcome any strong action the council can take.
I don’t welcome heavy prosecution of cigarette-end droppers, but a fast-food box dropped cunningly from the slightly open door of a parked car, a bag of dog-poo hung carefully in the bushes in the park, a tipper load of waste plaster, smashed up lavatory pans, concrete blocks, waste timber, and broken tiles etc etc, are all flagrant examples of the dumper’s disdain for the rest of us, and above all, for the person who has to clear up the mess.
Survelliance of dumping sites via CCTV?. This is one use of CCTV I approve of.
Lewis comments “I reported a site in S Croydon that had become a rubbish tipping site recently (not on the public highway, nor Council-owned, but a left-over bit of land, and I was impressed with the speed with which the council got the land cleared” Did the land get put forward as a potential sale to BXB for £1?