Council flytipping team assembled after 26% increase in dumpings in Warwick

• ITV News Central Reporter Hannah Kings teamed up with a new flytipping team to hit the streets in Warwick

A dedicated flytipping team has been created in Warwick, after incidents in the district rose 26% in the last year.

Warwick District Council used to outsource the clear-up of dumped waste but now it has set up its own team - specifically dedicated to tackling the issue.

ITV News Central went out with the team tasked with clearing the flytips - and where they can, with finding those responsible.

Steve Ranford - Street Cleansing Team Supervisor - told us the most common types of rubbish they find are furniture, builders’ waste, tyres and bags of general household rubbish.

The day we went out with Steve and his team, they’d had 18 reports of flytipping across the district. It took the team an entire day to clear them, and Steve said it’s very common that they clear a tip one day and it’s back again the next.

Each time they arrive at a site where waste has been dumped, the team has to sort through every bag and piece of rubbish by hand to try to find evidence of where it has come from - and who is responsible for dumping it.

Steve said the increase in flytipping is "frustrating" for him and his teams.

The number of incidents of flytipping in the district of Warwick rose by 26% last year, from 2,032 cases in 2021 to 2,563 in 2022.

The council says having their own team of "local officers who know the local area and the hotspots" means they can more easily engage with residents to prevent flytipping in the first place. Where they see repeated and deliberate flytipping however, they can issue fines of up to £1,000.

Councillor Will Roberts told us he "hopes" having the team in action will stop the problem of flytipping, but with 40 incidents reported last week alone, and the team saying that was ‘a quiet week’, there is work to do.

It’s not just a countryside problem, the teams are often called to sites in town centres. We went with them to a site in a residential area of Leamington Spa - where people told us they do notice dumped rubbish on streets and in canals.

The council’s education officer, Steph Taylor, goes house to house talking to residents with the aim of educating people about how to correctly dispose of rubbish. She says a lot of the problems come from people not knowing when their bin collection days are, so people put out rubbish when they see other people’s bags, which "perpetuates the problem".

Flytipping has increased across the country and Warwick is no different, but it’s hoped with this team working on education and enforcement, those illegally dumping here might eventually start to clean up their act.

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