Council spent £1m clearing 5,000 fly-tipping cases

Rubbish bags and rubble found dumped near Wainstalls

Fly-tipping in Calderdale has cost taxpayers almost £1m in the last year, the council said.

Calderdale Council said it had dealt with 5,053 cases between 2023-24, according to the latest figures.

In a bid to combat the problem the Labour-run authority said it was now using dedicated teams to remove waste, issue fines and prosecute perpetrators.

Danielle Durans, cabinet member for public services and communities, said while some people viewed it as a harmless crime "all taxpayers" were "victims of fly-tipping".

Calderdale Council has the power to seize and crush vehicles involved in fly-tipping

Oli Crossland, the council's principal response officer, said the authority took fly-tipping "really seriously", saying that the consequences for those caught were "quite severe".

"We can serve fixed penalty notices on people, up to £1,000, which we do quite often, " he said.

"We can seize vehicles and take them to court and prosecute people."

Amanda Briggs, from Mount Tabor Residents Association, helps report instances of fly-tipping

The authority also rely on volunteers to report incidents in some of the more remote parts of the Calder Valley.

Amanda Briggs from the Mount Tabor Community Association, in Halifax, helps run a monthly litter pick and said residents report instances of fly-tipping at least once a week.

"We see furniture, sofas, chairs, we see appliances - there was a fridge down the road a couple of weeks ago - and then we see smaller bits," she said.

"We see DIY, trimmings from carpets, bits of wood, we see builders rubble in sacks.

"It's sickening. You just feel angry and sad. And because it keeps happening it just gets frustrating, because its all the time. There's hot spots where you'll see something, the team will come out clear it away, then a week or two later there's more there."

Nationally, government figures suggest illegal waste tipping costs the country £1bn a year, with incidents on the rise.

The number of reports of fly-tipping in England rose from 1.08m in 2022-23 to 1.15m in 2023-24.

Durans said "All our budgets are increasingly challenging and having to deal with this is a huge impact because of the resources it takes.

"Every single council tax payer who is paying their taxes are having that direct impact."

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