Fly Tipping: Britain's Lockdown Problem - Tonight

There were over a million incidents of fly tipping last year in England alone. It’s an unsightly, and expensive, problem - costing nearly £60m of taxpayers' money to clean up in 2019. Now with the country in lockdown, and many Local Authority tips forced to close, fly tipping has spiked.

In Wigan, the Council has just reopened their recycling centres, after seeing a 51% increase in fly tipping during lockdown. Meanwhile in Manchester, Claire Benson, a volunteer for the charity Keep Britain Tidy, has been filming piles of rubbish near her home that she says have grown over the past few weeks:

Hotspots

In Tonight: Fly Tipping: Britain’s Rubbish Problem, reporter Jonathan Maitland also highlights the hotspots where fly tipping was rife - even before the lockdown.

This abandoned road near Newport, Wales has become a magnet for fly tippers

He visits Newport, South Wales - to see a stretch of road dubbed ‘the road to nowhere’. Built as part of an industrial development, it was abandoned during construction - and the fly tippers moved in.

Local Councillor Brian Miles says he’s never seen it so bad.

So why has the site not been cleared?

Tonight asked the local authority responsible, Newport City Council, who told us that dealing with fly tipping here is a priority for them, and they have already undertaken numerous clean ups, recently removed hazardous waste, and are working to increase security measures in the area.

In late 2019, Rotherham Council’s longest running investigation into fly tipping culminated in two members of the same family being successfully convicted. They’d used social media and door-to-door leaflets to advertise their services in waste disposal.

Waste criminal Horace Piggott dumped rubbish illegally for years

There are those looking to assist the authorities and make a difference in the countryside as well as the cities. Martin Montague created a phone app, ClearWaste, that allows anyone in the UK to report fly tipped waste:

This huge pile of rubbish in Mill Hill, London, captured by ClearWaste, cost authorities £150,000 to remove

You can catch ITV Tonight's 'Fly Tipping: Britain's Lockdown Problem' on ITV at 7:30pm.