People and businesses dumping their rubbish in public spaces has become a perennial problem for towns across East Lancashire, even in boroughs where enforcement action against fly tippers is among the highest in the country.
This dynamic was brought to the fore at last week’s Blackburn with Darwen Council forum, where a motion brought by 4BwD’s Cllr Terri Mahmood challenged the authority’s recent efforts to crack down on the rubbish that is blighting some of the town’s back alleys and residential areas.
The motion called on the council to publish information about fly tipping hotspots on an annual basis, while asking for greater mobile CCTV coverage in problem areas to assist with enforcement action.
It also questioned the timing of a recent announcement from the council of an extra £500,000 to tackle the issue.
Executive member for environment and communities, Cllr Jim Casey, said this funding would pay for a number of measures to step up the council’s enforcement action, already the fifth highest nationally, but admitted that the blight had ‘gotten out of hand’.
Cllr Casey said: “We’re going to get extra fly-tipping teams, back alley teams, more mobile CCTV, static cameras.
"We will be getting an environmental crime officer who will just be concentrating on that.”
Pointing to the significant enforcement action that saw 93 fly-tipping penalties amounting to £32,838 issued last year, he added: “We understand the problems that people in this borough have got.
"Fly-tipping is out of hand. We are collecting more waste now, and fly-tipping is going up.
"We know that it is the minority of people in this borough that are causing the problems, that are making it worse for the majority.
“The majority of this town just wants to be proud of the streets and back alleys and the places that they visit.”
The deputy leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council, Cllr Quesir Mahmood, explained how the authority was being forced to pivot by the changing patterns of fly tipping, which has increased despite more waste than ever being collected and teams of volunteer litter pickers.
He said: “We know that fly tipping is a real issue across the borough.
"It’s not new, it’s existed for many years, and we’ve all tried, regardless of our political affiliation, to make an impact.
“As councillors, we walk around our streets, and we see it only getting worse.”
This increasing prevalence of rubbish on the street is despite changes being made to reduce some of the push factors that lead people to abandon their waste, including the council’s offer to collect up to 20 points' worth of bulky objects per household per year.
Adding that he has seen incidents of fly-tipping increase across the North West, Cllr Quesir Mahmood said: “It’s not new, it’s not something that we’ve suddenly uncovered, but the patterns have changed for sure, there’s no doubt about that.
“The incidents of people fly-tipping, or needing support, have increased quite substantially, so we have to look at what we can do as a council.
"That’s what we as a Labour group have been trying to do.”
He also pushed back against claims that the executive were being reactive, saying that this work had begun ‘way before’ 4BwD’s motion had been presented.
But while there was some posturing over whether the executive had led the way, or been pressured by 4BwD, the majority of the chamber was able to rally behind the motion, which was amended to thank the council workers attempting to tackle the issue.
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Leader of the Reform UK group on the council, Cllr Daniel Matchett, supported the motion and thanked 4BwD for moving it forward.
Cllr Matchett said: “This motion adds a plan for the hotspots to be based on evidence, for the cameras to go where they will make a difference, and for the results to be published every year so that residents can see what has changed.”
The mover of the motion, 4BwD’s Cllr Mahmood, welcomed the amended version, but continued to question: “If this level of investment was already developed, residents would rightly ask why it wasn’t announced last month, last year, or at any point before this motion was submitted.”
Turning to the support it gained from all sides of the chamber, he added: “Supporting this motion should be straightforward; all it does is ensure that any £500,000 that is spent is spent properly.
"It is costed, legally compliant, evidence-based, and subject to scrutiny before approval. Not announced in the press beforehand.”
The motion was passed, with the additional £505,000 in funding set to be reviewed at the next meeting of Blackburn with Darwen’s executive board on Thursday (October 8).
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