Historic village blocked by fly-tipping

A road in Southwick, the historic village where D-Day was planned, was completely blocked by fly-tipping earlier this week.

Winchester City Council has now cleared the mess but taxpayers will have to foot the bill, likely to be more than £1,000.

Winchester City Council said: “This week our teams cleared a public road, near Southwick, of various kitchen items and building materials that had been illegally fly-tipped.

“Please store your bulky waste at home until you can dispose of it properly. Every fly-tip takes our staff off the front line of waste collection #StayHomeSaveLives“

Fly-tippers are using the Coronavirus Crisis and the fact that many household recycling centres are currently closed as a justification to dump illegal waste, according to Martin Montague, creator of the free ClearWaste.com fly-tipping reporting website and app.

“At the moment householders must store things they’d normally take to a tip,” says Martin. “They must not hand their unwanted stuff to just any person with a van who offers to remove it for them for a bit of cash.

“If they do it will almost certainly end up fly-tipped and the householder may well – and quite rightly – then get prosecuted as it is their responsibility to ensure that their waste is taken away by a licenced and legitimate company.

“Because of lockdown, not many people are out at the moment so anyone who is travelling for legitimate reasons and sees a suspicious vehicle should get its details so that the information can be passed on to the authorities.

“It really is disgusting that rather than put up with the inconvenience of having to store stuff at home that people would normally take to the tip or, in the case of, normal household rubbish, wait for the dustbin men and women, who are working very hard to deal with rubbish and stay a sensible distance apart from each other, people give stuff to scumbags who then go round fly-tipping.

“We’ve seen a big increase in the number of incidents of fly-tipping reported on our ClearWaste.com website since, totally understandably, local authorities across the country closed their recycling centres and tips.

“It is disgraceful and just adds to the burden on our police, hard-pressed local council workers, not to mention the cost and inconvenience it causes farmers who are all working hard to keep the nation supplied with milk, meat and vegetables.”

Photos: Winchester City Council