The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
South Holland District Council spent almost £60,000 last year cleaning up dumped items.
The figures released by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) reveal the council spent £59,418 attending to 671 incidents.
In 2016, DEFRA reported 599 incidents in South Holland.
Nationally, the council with the largest bill was Northampton, which spent £886,562 clearing up 18,128 incidents of fly-tipping, DEFRA’s figures revealed.
The DEFRA report said the cost across the East Midlands last year exceeded £3 million.
These numbers are for cleaning up council land only – the cost of cleaning up items dumped on private land is the landowner’s responsibility. The Country Land and Business Association estimates the cost of clearing fly-tipping privately averages at £800 per incident (see page 13). The DEFRA report puts this figure at £1,000.
Farmers are also responsible if any dumped waste damages the environment, said William Nicholl, head of insurance at Lycett. He said: “Farmers are well aware of this issue and are saddened by the visual impact it has on the countryside they maintain, as well as it being a nuisance and inconvenience when trying to get on with their normal, daily jobs.
“However, I don’t think that farmers are as aware that, should they fail to deal with incidences of flytipping on their land and it leads to environmental damage, they could be held liable under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
“With many authorities looking at introducing charges for bulky waste and organic waste collections and charging for dumping waste at council-run tips, there is a fear that flytipping incidents on farmland will increase.”
The report from DEFRA says January typically sees a surge in fly-tipping, “with rogue residents and traders dumping post-festive waste.”
