Pile it high: the dump at Colliers Wood was more than five feet high after the criminal gang emptied their tipper trucks. It cost the owner £15,000 to have it cleared
Four men sentenced after they were found to have issued threats and blackmail, destroyed property and, at a site off the Purley Way, cost the property owner £300,000
The scale of the organised criminality which lies behind the scourge of fly-tipping in Croydon and across London has been exposed after a court case brought by the Environment Agency found four members of a gang guilty of conspiracy, after they turned vacant sites into illegal waste dumps within a few hours.
The men were sentenced for dumping waste at six sites across south London, including Imperial Way, off the Purley Way. Over the course of a year, they also dumped at Colliers Wood, in Mitcham, Carshalton and two sites in New Malden, in what the Environment Agency called a “ruthless” operation.
In at least one case, the criminal gang even tried to blackmail the owners of a site, to pay them off to avoid having lorry loads of building waste tipped on to their site.
The waste left was five feet high at Station Road in Colliers Wood after a demand for £5,000 was refused by site workers. The gang gave an ultimatum to one worker, telling them to pay the sum or: “I will fill this unit to the brim.”
The waste cost £15,000 to clear.
The men were found guilty at Kingston Crown Court of conspiracy to illegally dump controlled waste.
Photographic evidence: the EA relied on CCTV – from cameras that had not been smashed – to secure the prosecution
CCTV footage presented as evidence during the trial showed the men breaking into the areas and directing tipper trucks loaded with rubbish for dumping while trying to hide their faces.
The gang dumped tyres, furniture, old baths, doors, mattresses and a mix of construction debris and waste from house clearances. They wore masks to hide their identities and removed registration plates on their vehicles.
The landowner at Imperial Way was left £300,000 out of pocket, with security cameras smashed Workers on the site received threats from the gang.
Croydon Council would not act, because the dumping had occurred on private land.
Patrick Doherty, 42, from Chesham, and Martin Ward, 53, from Hertfordshire, have been jailed for 28 and 18 months respectively.
Michael Ward, aged 61, also known as Martin McCann and brother of Martin Ward, and from Hertfordshire,, and Simon O’Donnell, 37, from White City, both received 14 months, suspended for two years. Both were given 150 hours of community service work. O’Donnell is to be electronically tagged for two months.
Three were required to pay victim surcharges of £187, while Doherty was ordered to pay victim surcharge of £228.
Matt Higginson, environment manager for the EA, said: “I would urge anyone who suspects illegal waste activity to report it anonymously so we can tackle these crimes head on.”
The Environment Agency has been given an additional £45million over the next three years to try to tackle the growing issue.
In Croydon, the council’s public safety team was made redundant in 2023, under Mayor Perry’s administration. It was from around that time that the volume of fly-tips in Croydon began to soar, to the point where more than 1,000 fly-tips were being reported every week, according to government figures from DEFRA in February.
The DEFRA figures showed that Croydon under Mayor Perry has the worst record in the country for fly-tipping. Without any enforcement officers from 2023 until early in 2026, criminal fly-tippers could dump illegal waste in Croydon with little or no chance of being prosecuted.
According to DEFRA, on Perry’s watch, Croydon had 53,268 fly-tips in 2024-2025. The government figures relate to rubbish illegally dumped on public, rather than private, land.
Read more: Croydon has worst fly-tipping record in whole of England
Read more: Campaigners accuse council of ‘misinformation’ over fly-tips
Read more: Kafkaesque world of contractors clearing 98% of fly-tips
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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Thank goodness they were caught and sentenced and good on the environment agency. I hope they get justice well and truly served, paying back every penny to cover the costs incurred by others for their abhorrent crimes.
The ridiculous thing about the rules in this country is that councils are not obliged to tackle issues on private land. It is an easy get-out clause for something which the council has caused in the first place by raising costs for waste disposal, removing a department who monitored this illegal activity and thereby giving opportunities for these gangs to go round threatening people so they can do their dirty business.
These people are utter, utter scum. They should have been locked up for a decade.
As the council don’t do anything about waste dumped on private land, Piss-Poor’s garden in Castlemaine Ave looks a good target, or is that not allowed until Friday 8th May, to avoid the pre-election period ?!
This suggests that the motive was extortion rather than avoiding payment of disposal fees.
The law needs to change so that private landowners are not responsible for the disposal of dumped waste, and ensuring that local authorities have to respond quickly when illegal dumping on private land is reported. The areas covered by waste in the UK are expanding daily, Councils have disposal facilities, landowners don’t. If gvernment subsidies to Councils are required before they will react, so be it. Meanwhile cameras need to alert Councils and owners and identify criminals who left the tipped waste.
Are you serious, Di? Removing responsibility from landowners for the state of their own property? That way madness lies, surely?