Resident fined £400 after rubbish fly-tipped
A former Wiltshire resident has been slapped with a £400 fine for not checking if the person they paid to take away their waste was licenced.
The waste, which the person paid £50 to remove, was found fly-tipped at Windmill Hill Plantation in Ludgershall.
Wiltshire Council could not chase the perpetrator as the resident did not help to identify the fly-tipper.
A spokesman for the local authority said: “If the resident had correctly checked the waste carriers license details with the Environment Agency, provided details about the collectors and vehicle registration/description, this would have allowed enforcement officers to trace the offender and the resident would have avoided a fixed penalty notice.”
The resident has since been given a £400 fine, which will be reduced to £200 if paid within 10 days.
Recently, the council has used new powers in seizing vehicles involved in fly-tipping with two such offenders’ vehicles awaiting destruction.
Mark McClelland, cabinet member for waste said: “We desperately want to trace and prosecute the person(s) responsible for dumping rubbish, but we can only trace the fly-tippers when residents comply with their duty of care by doing these checks and retaining the information.
“People should be wary about using a ‘man with a van’ or similar adverts on social media to dispose of waste. Many state they are licensed and are responsible but aren’t and simply take the cash and dump the waste.”
Meanwhile a Swindon man has been hit with fines of £700 for fly-tipping waste in Broad Hinton, Wiltshire.
Environmental enforcement officers traced the waste back to another Swindon resident, who assisted the council in identifying the culprit after being duped by a social media advert.
The man was formally questioned by the police and fines were issued for fly-tipping and waste duty of care offences by Wiltshire Council environmental enforcement officers.
Fixed penalties were deemed appropriate for this small scale fly-tipping, anything larger or hazardous would have resulted in a prosecution in court.
Mark McClelland, cabinet member for waste said: “We are committed to increasing resources to crackdown on waste crimes like fly-tipping and littering. We’ve had success in prosecutions, but we will do more and stop people like this spoiling our beautiful countryside.”
Residents can report fly-tipping online by visiting www.wiltshire.gov.uk/mywiltshire-online-reporting, or calling 0300 456 0100.
Credit: Matthew McLaughlin, Local Democracy Reporter
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