Council shifts more than 400 tonnes of fly-tipping across Doncaster in just three months

Updated figures also reveal the number of incidents of fly-tipping on the council’s back-log has been ‘substantially reduced’ with bosses added they have ‘significantly exceeded’ the 65 per cent for removing fly-tipping within the borough for ‘the first time in two years’.

New figures also show that 533 people were handed fixed penalty notices (FPNs) between October and December 2021 for littering offences. Each offender was fined £150.

In the same period, the council issued 5 FPNs of £400 each for people who were caught fly-tipping, and issued a further 29 fines of £150 for so-called ‘small scale fly-tipping incidents such as the unlawful disposal of a black bin bag waste.

There have also been 10 prosecutions with total fines and costs amounting to around £5,000 as well as 40 hours unpaid community service.

Council bosses said that Quarter 3 (October to December) is ‘always a challenging period’ for the service when it comes to streetscape standards.

They added that road and pathways cleansing ‘is negatively affected’ due to the addition of seasonal leaf clearance requirements and the need to suspend some mechanical sweeping on highways due to gritting operations leading to a higher volume of waste and debris.

Mayor Ros Jones in her budget proposals in February last year, committed £466,000 in resources to tackle fly-tipping which included the addition of 15 new jobs to help with clear-up and enforcement of fly-tipping practices.

Sennette Wroot, senior policy and insight manager at Doncaster Council, said: “Fly-tipping continues to be a national, regional and local issue for all councils.

“However the investment made in 2021/2022 is having a positive impact on performance with 95 per cent of cases were closed within timeframes.

“There were 1,329 new cases opened and 1,261 were closed with 404 tonnes of waste removed attributed to fly tipping.

“Street Scene has continued to operate all services despite the ongoing challenge of Covid-19 and transmission rates within the workforce have been reasonably low due to the effective management of Covid-19 security within the workplace.”