Burngreave is the worst Sheffield area for fly tipping as council acts to catch culprits

The information was revealed by a Freedom of Information request by the Local Democracy Reporting Service to the council. It showed that 2,289 incidents of fly tipping were recorded by the council in Burngreave between April and December 2022. The citywide total was 8,722.

The next worst council wards were Darnall with 1,182 incidents, Central 692, Gleadless Valley 628 and Shiregreen and Brightside 416. The bottom five wards with fewest recorded incidents were Ecclesall with 30 incidents, Graves Park 28, and City, Handsworth and Park and Arbourthorne with 1 each.

At a recent council meeting, Coun Denise Fox asked chair of the waste and street scene policy committee Coun Joe Otten how many fines had been issued for fly-tipping over the past 12 months after she said Labour ward councillors had provided extra funding to council local area committees (LACs) to tackle litter, graffiti and fly-tipping.

Coun Otten said the total was 123. Broken down by LAC, the figures were:Central 20East 18North East 44North 5South East 30South 6.

The South West LAC figures were missing from the report.

Cameras

Asked by Coun Fox if improvements have been made, Coun Otten said that some of the funding was used to purchase 12 movable CCTV cameras which have been deployed at hot spots where fly tipping from vehicles was prevalent.

He said that fencing, boulders and other measures will be brought in at some hot spots to help deter vehicles, as well as deterrence measures at smaller recycling centres.

Coun Fox said: “Given the extra resource put in, I would have expected the figure to be a bit higher than 123 over the city. Are we not doing investigations into this fly tipping because I constantly see fly tips being repeated in the same areas.”

LibDem Coun Otten responded: “Of course we would like fly tipping to be lower and fines not to be necessary. I think that the extra money that has gone in has been applied to good effect”, adding this was a cross-party policy agreed by Labour, his party and the Greens.

“I have myself recently met with a community group in Darnall who were particularly concerned about fly tipping there and I’ve also spoken with local ward members in that ward,” said Coun Otten.

“Across the whole city, I think we’re aware there are hot spots for fly tipping. I also recently had a visit to the Don in Neepsend with council officers and we discussed some issues there, with potential improvement for that area.

Determination

“Ultimately, we need to stop people dropping litter and fly tipping and that is what it boils down to. The city can only be reactive in terms of cleaning up afterwards.

“It’s a necessary job, I think we have a new-found determination to do it, but there is so much work out there that it takes a lot to have the impact that there is.”

Coun Fox said given the extra resource, she didn’t think the council was seeing good results. Coun Otten said he thought the idea was to tackle fly tipping, not increase the number of fines.

He said that some locations are not suitable for cameras and their presence in others would be so obvious that people would just go somewhere else.

He said he thought the investment had been effective and the issue had not divided councillors from different parties on his committee.

*The city council and Burngreave ward councillors have been approached for comment on the Freedom of Information request figures but have not yet responded.

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