Fly-tipping cost to Wokingham residents revealed

£145,000 last year.

Bosses recorded more than 1,100 incidents in 2018/2019, averaging 93 fly-tips per month.

Collecting the waste set the council back £103,000, and a further £42,000 was forked out to dispose of the junk.

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Councillor Parry Batth, Wokingham Borough Council’s (WBC) environment chief, said: “We have a comprehensive action plan in place to make improvements in how we respond to fly-tipping and more importantly how we can prevent it happening in the first place.

“We are checking local businesses to make sure they have the correct waste disposal arrangements in place, and very soon we will be launching our Countryside Watch initiative to work with local communities to deter fly-tipping in their areas.”

According to Cllr Batth, fly-tipping incidents in Wokingham borough have reduced to 71 per month in the first half of 2019/2020.

This means the taxpayer shelled out another £61,000 on top of last year’s fee to get rid of dumped waste.

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Cllr Batth continued: “Whilst I am pleased to see that our efforts this year to combat fly-tipping are already having a positive effect upon the number of incidents being reported to us, we are committed to doing more to further reduce the impact of fly-tipping on the lives of our residents.”

In September, WBC leader Cllr John Halsall told the News fly-tipping across Wokingham borough was an “epidemic” and promised to get tough on the “ugly” problem.

This followed the announcement of a list of eleven actions bosses WBC had produced to tackle the issue.

Proposals included creating a fly-tipping direct line for members of the public, naming and shaming perpetrators, blacklisting companies caught fly-tipping from council contracts and more.

Councillor Lindsay Ferris asked about the “significant increase” in fly-tipping at a meeting of WBC’s top team on Thursday, October 31.

Planning boss Wayne Smith told members about an incident in Hurst where fly-tippers had included details about where they were installing a new bathroom in amongst their waste.

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Cllr Smith said: “Whoever dropped it must have been stupid.”