Since Croydon’s Conservative Mayor Jason Perry was elected in 2022, there have been just four successful prosecutions brought by the council for criminal fly-tipping in the borough.
Scourge of Croydon: there was a time when the council brought prosecutions for fly-tips such as this
That’s according to a Freedom of Information response to an enquiry submitted by Tony Hooker of the Litter-Free Norbury campaign.
This latest discovery will torpedo the Croydon Mayor’s claims to be serious about cleaning up the borough and making fly-tippers pay for their crimes.
The bald figures provided under the FoI show the impact of the covid lockdown in 2020 and 2021, when no figures are recorded at all for fly-tipping prosecutions.
There were two prosecutions in 2022 (Perry was elected in May of that year), and then a single prosecution in 2023 and again in 2024.
In 2017, the council logged 171 prosecutions for fly-tipping. Two people were sent to prison. The successful prosecutions included a landlord and its company director whose South Norwood property was used as an illegal rubbish dump, and received fines totalling £9,000 under the council’s Don’t Mess With Croydon campaign.
The council also seized 32 vehicles used for fly-tipping in the same year.
In 2018, Croydon Council prosecuted 196 people for fly-tipping and littering.
The specialist, but small, team of council officials was disbanded the following year as a cost-cutting measure. And in 2019, there was a single fly-tipping prosecution.
Sorry statistics: Mayor Jason Perry hasn’t had council staff spending time and money to publicise these ‘shocking’ figures
Fly-tipping is the illegal dumping of waste, including household, industrial, and commercial waste, a criminal offence under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
The maximum penalty is a fine of up to £50,000, or up to five years in prison, or both.
It was Hooker’s previous diligent work that exposed how the council had 1,000 litter bins removed from the borough’s streets, just to make the collection rounds by rubbish contractors Veolia quicker, and cheaper, while leaving Croydon’s pavements strewn with rubbish.
The council figures obtained by Hooker show that over the past five years (2020 to 2024) there have been just 14 prosecutions for littering in Croydon.
The figures also show zero prosecutions for graffiti and fly-posting.
“The lack of enforcement is shocking, but I guess not very surprising,” Hooker said when posting the figures on social media.
“Hardly being tough on crime is it Jason Perry?” he added.
“It is an unfortunate situation, but whilst fly-tippers know they can get away with it with impunity the situation will only get worse.”
“Almost without exception, that always means the case is immediately dropped,” Hooker says. “A nice get-out, as the alternative might require someone to do some work!”
Read more: #Binmageddon: Now Croydon named worst in UK for fly-tipping
Read more: Croydon’s fly-tip prosecution record is 2nd worst in all England
Read more: Council finally starts work to clear its own Waddon fly-tip
Read more: Residents’ despair over vile fly-tips, including a pig’s head
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