ILLEGAL fly tipping may return to plague Lancashire with the introduction in October of the new landfill tax, county planning officer Graeme Bell has warned.

The tax will apply to all landfill sites in the UK, and waste disposal contractors will have to cough up between £2 and £7 a tonne in tax to dump rubbish.

Lancashire County Council will have to shell out £2.3 million in the coming year for the privilege of disposing of waste in its own sites, the planning, industrial development and tourism committee was told.

The government says its aim is to reduce waste and encourage recycling. But Mr Bell told councillors: "The difficulty with landfill tax is that it is not only going to make people think creatively about how to reduce and recycle rubbish - it is also going to make them think about disposal, in a less than constructive way. "The return of fly tipping to Lancashire is something which we view with dismay."

Committee chairman Coun George Slynn said the county council had already asked for money raised to be recycled back into local projects rather than going to central government coffers.

His resolution to liaise with local councils over posssible fly tipping blackspots and to press the government for cash to be returned won full support from Conservatives.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.