Ribble Valley mobile CCTV cameras to target fly-tippers

The cameras will be deployed at dumping hotspots after councillors approved the measures amid concerns that illegal waste disposal presents ‘significant challenges throughout the borough’.

Trained officers will deploy the cameras at locations identified through reports of repeat offending, fly-tipping data, public complaints, intelligence reports and environmental crime investigations.

Ribble Valley’s health and housing committee met on October 29 to discuss the proposals.

A report prepared for the meeting reads: “Whilst traditional investigative techniques, including inspections, patrols, taking witness statements and waste evidence examinations remain effective, investigations can be resource intensive and offenders are not always identified.

“The use of re-deployable CCTV provides an additional investigative tool that enables officers to monitor known hotspot locations, gather evidential footage and identify offenders responsible for environmental crime.”

The author added that the surveillance would be ‘overt’, with warning signs displayed at all camera locations, meaning covert surveillance provisions would not apply.

Talking councillors through the measures at the meeting, a council officer described fly-tipping as a ‘national problem, as well as a local one’.

He added: “Enviro-crime and fly tipping is on the rise, we’ve got criminals coming into the area, tipping and going out, we have got people probably from inside the area doing it as well.”

Councillor Rosemary Elms, Conservative member for Bowland ward, said: “I am really in favour of this, because I had issue a few years ago with two quarries in the valley being filled illegally.

“At that time I said we should have our own drone squad, because one of them isn’t visible from the road but the other one is right by the road.”

A council officer confirmed the authority had bought a drone and was looking into using it for these purposes.

Councillor Mary Robinson, Liberal Democrat member for Primrose ward, added: “I agree, also reading various comments, people are saying they don’t want (the fly tippers) to see it and I have to agree.

“Even if it’s a mobile one, we have got to be able to camouflage it.”

She added that a £1,000 fine was ‘not enough’, although a council officer said increased fines introduced by the government had come into effect nationally and would be presented for the council to adopt at a later meeting.

Cllr Robinson added: “They’re disgusting people, aren’t they?”

Councillor Malcolm Peplow, Green member for East Whalley, Read and Simonstone ward, said: “It is an absolute scourge, some of this on the bigger scale is definitely organised crime, and organised criminals really are making a fortune out of illegal dumping.

“When it’s a small amount, it’s more opportunistic I think, and a lot of it is commercial waste coming out of the backs of vans. But at the end of the day we are, in essence, often the victims of policies made, for example, by Lancashire County Council.

“The more restrictive the county council is on its rules regarding taking waste to recycling centres, it’s like squeezing a jelly – they’re squeezing the jelly at their end to try to restrict the amount of stuff being tipped in their recycling centres, and it is pouring out into the lay-bys and quarries across our borough.”

The committee approved the measures.