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Cleaning up after the flytippers

Southampton has come top of the league in a new study of the places worst affected by flytipping in the South East.

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Hampshire city tops South East's flytipping league

A new study has found that Southampton is the place worst affected by flytipping in the South East. The report from the GMB public services union says that a total of 70,745 incidents have been reported by 67 councils in the South East, with 8,708 incidents in Southampton alone.

Other areas in the top ten for the year 2010/11 were:

  • Second - Milton Keynes 5,321 incidents
  • Third - Medway 3,130 incidents,
  • Fourth - Basingstoke & Deane 2,879 incidents,
  • Fifth - Hastings 2,873,
  • Sixth - Brighton and Hove 2,227,
  • Seventh - Reading 2,179,
  • Eighth - Swale 1,918,
  • NInth - Test Valley 1,881,
  • Tenth - Dartford 1,777.

“Not only is fly-tipping illegal but it is damaging to the environment and according to the Environment Agency it costs £100-150m per annum to clean up.

"Two thirds of fly tipping involves household rubbish and GMB believes it would make good economic sense to invest in more municipal waste and recycling centres to make it easier and cheaper for the public to dispose of waste properly...

"Some councils like Redbridge have redefined 'Fly-tipping' so that even 5 bin bags left on the street is classified as 'litter' and not fly-tipping. This would explain why some of the figures are well down on the previous stats.

"However local authorities also need to target fly-tipping to improve their policing of the problem – out of 820,000 incidents last year there were only 2,500 prosecutions throughout England and Wales.”

– Paul Maloney , GMB Regional Secretary
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Cleaning up after the flytippers

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