BLACKBURN MP Kate Hollern writes her fortnightly column for the Lancashire Telegraph...

Have you ever popped to the shop to buy a pint of milk and seen a mattress down a side street, or some bin bags on a strip of grass?

Constituents raise hundreds of similar fly-tipping cases with me every year. My first reaction is always the same: why do people fly-tip? Don’t they realise the harm it causes communities? Fly-tips are unpleasant, an eyesore and often smell. They also cost Blackburn with Darwen Council hundreds of thousands each year to clean up.

The government has stopped collecting data on how much it costs to clear fly-tips but according to its latest data from 2016-17, councils spend an estimated £58 million a year. That’s money that could’ve been spent on other services such as social care.

Of course there are industrial scale fly-tippers, and sadly we’ve seen them in greater numbers and they must face the full force of the law, but I think what catches many people out is the confusion around what actually constitutes fly-tipping.

According to Keep Britain Tidy, only three in 10 people think dumping black bags near a public bin is fly-tipping. Yet it is.

Unbelievably, not everyone agreed in its survey that throwing a sofa or a TV out on the street was fly-tipping. The same goes for clothes outside a charity shop, garden waste left on the street, or cardboard boxes on and around a recycling bank. All of these examples are fly-tips.

The industrial scale fly-tips arguably cause the most harm, but it’s a black bag here and a mattress there that are far too frequent.

There are on average one million fly-tips reported each year – and roughly 3,491 of them are in Blackburn with Darwen. It’s not fair on local residents, and it’s not fair on the council and its staff responsible for clearing smelly nappies.

In 2011, when I was the leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council and in response to council budget cuts, I kicked off the Your Community Your Call scheme to encourage people to step up. Since then, the community has done more than I’d ever anticipated.

Local organisations like Keep Blackburn Tidy and Keep Darwen Tidy have been at the forefront of tackling the waste on our streets, encouraging hundreds if not thousands of local people to pick up a litter-picker and do their bit.

On a recent litter-pick over in Little Harwood and Whitebirk, Blackburn councillor Mustafa Desai found lots of discarded clothes and make-up boxes.

When fly-tips are reported to the council, staff don’t just clear it up. They rummage through the contents to find any information on the suspected fly-tipper. The council is always catching fly-tippers and if convicted, a fly-tipper could face a fine up to £50,000, six months imprisonment, or both. There’s no two ways about it – fly-tipping is illegal.