The UK government has announced £775,000 in grant money for councils to help them combat fly-tipping.
Environment Minister Rebecca Pow said that 21 local authorities will benefit from the grants, which will fund schemes like roadside CCTV, barriers, and better waste infrastructure to prevent fly-tipping.
The full list of recipients of this round of fly-tipping funding:
- Spelthorne Borough Council;
- Northumberland County Council;
- Cambridge City Council;
- Hyndburn Borough Council;
- Derby City Council;
- Stockton on Tees Borough Council;
- Waltham Forest;
- Plymouth City Council;
- Birmingham City Council;
- Wyre Borough Council;
- Herefordshire County Council;
- Manchester City Council;
- Calderdale Borough Council;
- Bristol City Council;
- Tamworth Borough Council;
- Leeds City Council;
- Mansfield District Council;
- Staffordshire Moorlands District Council;
- Rotherham Borough Council;
- Pendle Borough Council;
- Doncaster Borough Council.
Councils will have six months to roll out their initiatives before sharing how this worked in practice and helping other councils to develop similar schemes.
Combat fly-tipping
The new grants aim to build on the successes of the first round of projects, which provided £450,000 to 11 councils last year, the government said.
The projects funded in the first round included building new community gardens in fly-tipping hotspots in Thanet, and CCTV with automatic number-plate recognition in Buckinghamshire.
Environment Minister Rebecca Pow said: “Fly-tipping is a cynical crime which blights communities and the environment.
“Our first round of grants over the last year were a big success – which is why we are expanding this scheme to help more local authorities around the country take the fight to waste criminals.”
Belinda Snow, neighbourhood warden manager for Durham County Council, said: “We are grateful that the funding became available from Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), and the council was awarded £50,000 to tackle fly-tipping at known hotspots with the use of CCTV, signage and educational bin stickers.
“The funding enabled us to invest in our communities, resulting in cleaner streets and an overall positive response from residents.
“We monitored the intervention areas for three months after installation of CCTV and signage in comparison to the data three months before and we could see a 68.4% total reduction in fly tipping incidents.”
Snow said the use of CCTV has also increased the council’s ability to carry out enforcement action.
“We have had one successful prosecution at one hotspot location and we have issued a fixed penalty notice at another,” she said.
