Forum Topic

Council is to blame for flytipping epidemic

It was interesting to see Ealing launch a major crackdown on fly-tipping just after they were given permission by central government to significantly raise fines. I haven't seen any cases in the UK but other local authorities have grasped this opportunity with enthusiasm and started issuing PCNs to residents for fairly minor infractions. Catching serial fly tippers is always unlikely as they will know where the cameras are and how to avoid detection. However anyone hapless enough to have their traceable information in a flytip is going to be in trouble. Whether they actually were responsible in the first place is always going to be difficult and expensive to disprove. The videos of flytipping released so far seem to show fairly minor cases including one chap depositing a large box by a bin on Acton High Street presumably in the expectation that it would be collected when the bins were emptied. Like many people he probably weighed up the risk of doing this against a long round trip to Greenford. Previously he could have taken it the short hop to Stirling Road but now that is just holding the occasional cycling event and will never be accepting waste again. 

Gordon Southwell ● 5d23 Comments

Yes it is People.Complete lack of Civic Pride and basic etiquette. All out of the window.  That is now the norm.  When people sneer and ingore those who sweep their paths and the pavement outside their homes, those who wash the dog & fox mess away to make it better for everyone who uses the footway then you know there's a problem with mentality or culture.  The local authority does not help matters by years of frowning upon such normal pride. - irrespective of political parties.  They prefer their own 'initiatives' as it makes for a good photocall and a star on their CV.It is over densification with overcrowding and lack of infrastructure to properly support such a population and keep it in a relatively harmonious sense of organisation without overtones of authority.What we have though is Local governance at various levels trying to control and manipulate without actually providing the means, just the rhetoric and for most they simply ignore it or resent it.Making things more and more difficult whilst proclaiming to make things easier, might pull the wool over some eyes, but others with no scruples take advantage and abuse too much.

Raymond Havelock ● 1d

Aren't we forgetting one main thing here that the problem is PEOPLE (ie scum) not L B Ealing?

Simon Wycombe ● 2d

I think you can take recycling rates with a bit of a pinch of salt.  The biggest mistake was to have those enormously huge wheelie bins because it isn't obvious what is in them and offers far too much space in the black residual waste bin. Many Councils reduced the size of the wheelie bins after residents' anxieties over the amount of waste they would need to dispose of became clear and they learnt how to REDUCE their waste.There will be a problem at this time of year with students leaving rented accommodation and having not managed to dispose of what they no longer want and can't take with them when they return home - or wherever.  TOO MUCH STUFF!  Unscrupulous landlords will employ unscrupulous workers to remove whatever has been left and tart up the accommodation for re-letting.  What while they were living there was treated as household waste to those living there becomes chargeable business waste to those removing it later.  It is a shame that there are fewer charity shops than there were prior to the pandemic.  As it was much easier to deal with unwanted stuff then.In Oxford there was at one time a system set up by one or other of the universities whereby they helped their students by taking this stuff off them to pass on.  I guess they may have had volunteers who weren't desperate to celebrate end of exams and who were able to give their time to advertising online and then disposing of/sharing out what they gained for those in need and various charities.

Philippa Bond ● 2d

One thing the Council should have done is to continue accepting notifications from www.fixmystreet.com which is a good and easy way to report flytips and  pinpoint their positions which is successfully used by many Councils. After all people move around from place to place and need to be able to report to the relevant authority WHEREVER they encounter a problem!

Philippa Bond ● 3d

Well the new big pink electrics & electronics bin opposite South Ealing Station has been broken into again and there is a pile of smashed electrical and electronic stuff on the pavement.  This stuff seems a lot bigger ie printers than could ever have been put in the green WEEE bin previously on that site - so whether all this stuff was inside the bin (was the new one able to take larger items) or dumped later I don't know.In LBH you can put an ordinary carrierbagful of WEEE out with your recycling - that will cover a toaster but not the printer!If you book a free TRAID collection of unwanted clothing you can also add some small electricals to that collection.There's lot more info on recycling electrical stuff here:https://www.recycleyourelectricals.org.uk/That website certainly used to give info on how to delete your personal data.

Philippa Bond ● 3d

https://www.ealing.gov.uk/info/201171/recycling_services/1781/electrical_and_electronic_items_recyclingThere is a list of addresses of the SMALL electrical and electronic banks around the borough here.  I think the S Ealing is now back in business having been broken into and out of use for a while.However you should be able by law to take your old unwanted and failed WEEE to wherever you are buying a new from and leave it there.  Curry's will take all sorts of electrical stuff without any problem as well (ie not just like for like) and so will many other stores especially DIY superstores and you often get money off your next purchase.  You can often still get that credit when you take something in several weeks after you bought new from them.

Philippa Bond ● 3d

The cctv office in Ealing is a disgrace.A friend of mine had his bike nicked by some scrote on Haven Green.It was right under the cctv camera so he contacted the office who told him it would cost him a non refundable £100 to look at the footage.

Keith Iddon ● 3d

Once they know it simply shifts elsewhere. Secondly so much is duped by dodgy landlords and illegal working that they won't be booking anything legal or official anytime soon.  They might get caught out with their own rackets.

Raymond Havelock ● 3d

90% of the FT I see is builders' stuff.if we had ANPR/CCTV it would stopped in days/hours.

Simon Wycombe ● 3d

No, it’s not hard but people don’t do it. Ealings latest recycling rate is 48.17 percent, which is lower than pre-pandemic levels. Hardly indicates that policies are really working and perhaps illustrates that there are a lot of people who can’t be bothered with it.Making things more expensive, such as the garden waste collection, or less convenient, such as closing the nearest centre to where people live, doesn’t encourage anyone.Ironically, when I take my stuff to Greenford it involves a 10 miles round trip. Compare that to the four mile round trip to Stirling Road. Apparently this council is encouraging longer car journeys. How funny!

Simon Hayes ● 3d

You want to dispose of something then you go to Greenford or Abbey Road or pay the council to pick it up. It's not hard. People have options.

Kevin Wilson ● 3d

Look up Zipf’s law, the principle of least effort. It explains a lot of behaviour that the liberal progressives in this country find so abhorrent.

Simon Hayes ● 4d

I agree with some of what people have said here, namely that it's not as easy as it once was to take waste to a dump. I fondly remember the waste recycling centre on Bollo Lane in Chiswick where you could just turn up unannounced.However I think you make a good point Phillipa. We do need to think about how much waste we create in the first place.Having been doing a lot of renovating and gardening in recent years, I have had to give a lot of thought to ways of re-using the waste I have, or at least compacting that which definitely can't be re-used. Recycling takes time: sorting out different materials, rinsing, and taking recycling which can't be collected to the supermarket instead. It's all time and effort, but eventually it becomes part of everyday life. Driving massive bags of junk to the tip was once very easy, but in most cases it was not an advancement. Stopping the generating of waste at source, where possible, is. In my opinion.Local groups where people lend each other things or give things away, as well as the Library of Things in Ealing Broadway, are also progressive ways of avoiding buying more stuff which will seldom be used, and have certainly helped me out in the past, and vice-versa.I'd be interested to know what the most fly-tipped items are. I usually see electrical goods and mattresses. Anything else?

Dominik Klimowski ● 4d

Fly tipping in this whole borough has been a problem since the 1980s.  But in Brent it has been truly awful , particularly in Kingsbury and the Fryent Way area.On an industrial scale.But the newer problem is overdensification, flat conversions, limited garden space, and no proper infrastructure.Lots of people generate lots of rubbish and whilst the day to day stuff is dealt with , the bigger stuff from a broken TV stand to building works detritus is manageable if you have a decent sized car, or a garden or space to break itup.But people in flats have nowhere and no means and often now, no access to a vehicle. Damage excess to a spot hire car is huge and they are vociferous in chasing you for costs.It has been made harder and harder to legitimately dispose of waste. The populous goes up and the facilities go down. Most people do not have time, that's not their fault but it is a pressure on everyone. Then there's all the enviro stuff.  Badly organised, differing from place to place, and recycling is far from what it is publicly perceived as.Meddling and this councils unfeasible policies and influences have resulted in loss of facilities, over use of what remiains and huge amounts of time required.So it's not hard to see why businesses and residents use or abuse the under market in disposals. Time is money, and the amount of building works in Ealing alone and the stuff that is surplus to skips is everywhere.  Too many changes and costs are 'created' charges and overblown.  That's down to the council cashing in on the already high cost of waste disposal. So hiring a skip is costly but having a licence is time consuming and also too costly and seldom policed so damage to kerbs walls lamp post and pavements, even when reported goes unchallenged.But there is a complete lack of adequate recycling centres, it was not great in the first place but now with such a huge rise in populous and with very little if any personal outdoor space and limitations on residents vehicle access and use, its hardly rocket cscince to see why this has become such a problem.That is down to the local authority and the GLA.

Raymond Havelock ● 4d

While it may be correct to say that it is the primary responsibility for individual cases of flytipping is with the person who illegally dumps waste, the council has responsibility for the overall level of flytipping.  It is inevitable that policies which reduce the ease and availability of options to dispose of waste will lead to a rise in flytipping and that appears to be what's happening here. Ealing experienced 12,922 fly‑tipping incidents in 2022/23, up slightly from 12,303 the year before . By 2024, the council reported 22,730 incidents. You may choose to believe that suddenly the residents of Ealing have spontaneously become more prone to dump waste but it is more likely that the council's policy response has been inadequate.  The closure of the Stirling Road facility isn't the only deficiency in council policy that appears to be driving up flytipping. Charges per tonne of commercial waste have been rising consistently and now are considerably more than neighbouring boroughs. Tactics used successfully by other boroughs such as free 'Mega Skips' for bulky items have not been adopted. I am very sceptical that massively increased fines will deal with the problem as 'professional' flytippers will usually avoid them and I believe most will be given out for relatively minor offences as appears to be happening in other boroughs. It would be interesting to see what would happen if someone put an envelope addressed to Peter Mason in a flytip. For other householders this seems to be deemed proof that they are responsible. 

Gordon Southwell ● 4d

The Council provides a regular weekly collection from your home  as part of your Council Tax - that couldn't really be more convenient since it is something much of the rest of the world doesn't have!Years ago I remember an open top sports car arriving at Stirling Road with huge box with polystyrene packaging still inside balanced inside..  No attempt whatsoever to separate the different components - let alone flatten the box. Too flush to crush?  All you have to do is undo the ends.  Perhaps lessons need to be given with a cornflakes packet?  What happened to the teaching of volume in schools?  Do these people pack their lilos or airbeds ready inflated in their suitcases?Perhaps as part of Extended Producer Responsibility manufacturers could be persuaded to pay for step by step how to adverts on billboards?It's the lazy and gullible who fall for the illegal unregistered cash in hand collections which are then illegally dumped in beauty spots, on farms and parks etc.  Perhaps avoid using the archaic word "fly-tipping" and concentrate on calling it illegal dumping/dropping of litter and waste.Separation of materials is where it starts.  The less waste you create the less you need to dispose of.There's so much new and clever sustainable packaging being created to reduce the volume and make separation, collection and recycling easier it really should be applauded far more.

Philippa Bond ● 4d

Yep. It’s a money making business, tax.£10 for this, £20 for that.I can see why there’s fly tipping

Peter Yale ● 4d

Can't see how that wouldn't work, would definitely reduce the fly tipping.Which is exactly why Liebore LBE won't do it.  🤣

Rosco White ● 4d

Perhaps if the council made legal disposal easier then that would at least reduce some of the temptation to 'dump it anywhere'.

N V Brooks ● 4d

I read your comment Gordon, but I can't see how you blame the council for flytipping?D

Dominik Klimowski ● 4d

More rubbish on Elderberry Road last night.How much would CCTV cost as I am happy to fund it as a nearby resident. Luckily not too close by.

Simon Wycombe ● 4d

I would say flytipping is the sole responsibility of the people doing it.We all know that if it doesn't fit in the bin you can't just leave it alongside it or on it right?

Paul James ● 5d

I spoke to one of the local councillors for Hanger Hill and was told that the council (us) cannot afford a camera to catch the never ending dumping of waste by the side of the A40. Greystoke Park Terrace is Ealing's second tip now the one in south Acton is a virtue signalling exercise by Ealing council. It is seemingly beyond the council's capabilities to go through the rubbish and actually find and prosecute the people who dump it there knowing they will never be caught. Shameful!

Peter King ● 5d