Council clears fly-tip dumped six months ago

A fly-tip that had been left for six months - prompting county councillors to threaten to hire their own skip to remove it - has been cleared by the district council.

The pile of rubbish was first left on the the A611 Annesley Road between Hucknall and Annesley in Nottinghamshire last year.

Reform UK's Rory Green had written to Ashfield District Council in April giving the authority 14 days to respond and clear the mess.

At the time the authority said it was the landowner's responsibility to remove the pile but the council has since cleared the site and said it had found "a number of letters" within the waste which could help to bring a prosecution forward.

District and borough councils are primarily responsible for fly-tipping, but landowners must deal with waste dumped on their private property.

Charles Edwards, the district council's executive director for operations, said the clean-up itself cost £1,600.

"The offence happened on a piece of land which is unadopted," he said.

"We are weighing up the probability of being able to prosecute somebody in those instances and therefore recover costs.

"After investigation, we were able to find a number of pieces of evidence.

"We are in the middle of an enforcement case, we have identified people we believe to be involved and they have been invited in for an interview."

He said the waste was cleared last week with the work taking half a day.

"We want to spend that money on front-line services and not on land that we don't own, nor are responsible for," Edwards said, adding last year there had been more than 1,000 cases of fly-tipping in the district.

Green had written to Ashfield District Council last month to say he and fellow councillor Richard Darrington would hire a skip to clear the waste if the council did not clear it within 14 days.

He said he was "pleased to see this longstanding issue has been resolved by Ashfield District Council".

He added: "Although it had complexities, we are hoping moving forward to have swifter responses, better outcomes and holistic communication between the district and county authorities.

"It is our passion to put delivery for our hard-working taxpayers first."

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