Action plan with £200,000 extra funding to tackle fly-tipping menace in Milton Keynes

Extra funding of £200,000 is to be made available as part of a 15-point action plan to tackle the growing menace of fly-tipping in Milton Keynes.

Fly-tipping is on the rise with more than 5,800 reports of dumped waste received by the council over the past year.

It includes everything from household rubbish to hazardous commercial waste and costs the council thousands of pounds to deal with.

In response the council is to invest more in CCTV to catch those committing environmental crimes, give new powers to local areas for community clear outs and introduce new litter wardens with powers to issue on the spot fines.

The action plan will be presented to Cabinet on September 7 alongside a proposal to allocate an extra £200,000 over the coming year to boost the work being done and increase the council’s enforcement team to seven people.

Councillor Lauren Townsend, Cabinet Member for the Public Realm, said: “Tackling fly-tipping is a priority and we will not stand by and let it worsen. Here in Milton Keynes we’ve received 5,819 fly-tipping reports from the public since March 2020. This is the highest level since 2015.

"Sadly we know a minority of people will always continue to fly-tip, but we’ll be investing more in education and enforcement to reduce it to as low a level as possible, putting our biggest efforts into the places in MK we know are fly-tipping hotspots.”

Over the last year, the council has issued 129 Fixed Penalty Notices for waste crimes, including 53 for fly-tipping. Milton Keynes magistrates heard five cases of fly-tipping in the last year, issuing penalties totalling more than £5,000 and giving one offender 120hts' “community payback.” There are 10 cases at MK Magistrates Court awaiting prosecution for illegal dumping of waste.