Fly-tipper who dumped bed by roadside fined £4,600

Naiffisa Abbas was caught on camera dumping a bed

A man has been ordered to pay a total of £4,600 for dumping an old bed by the side of a road in north west London as part of a local council's crackdown on fly-tippers.

Naiffisa Abbas was photographed by a roadside camera leaving the bed, alongside other rubbish, at a known fly-tipping spot on Queensbury Park Road, Queensbury in March 2024.

Abbas, from Wembley, was found guilty at Willesden Magistrates' Court, where a judge added a further £2,000 to the initial fine because he failed to attend his hearing.

Brent Council says the fine sends a message that it "won't accept" fly-tipping.

The local authority says it has recently "ramped up" action on offenders by installing cameras at various hotspots and issuing 30% more fines.

More enforcement officers have been deployed and they have actively been touring the borough looking for evidence of offenders and fining them £1,000, the council says.

Last year, Brent Council declared a crackdown on what it called "selfish litter louts", after 35,000 cases of fly-tipping were recorded in the borough in 2022-2023.

The crime currently costs the local authority more than £1.5m each year, the Local Democracy Service reports.

As part of a crackdown on the crime, Brent Council has said its officers have been actively touring the borough looking for evidence to link to offenders

Cabinet member for the environment, Krupa Sheth, said: "We are taking a zero-tolerance approach to fly-tipping, which means you will see more enforcement officers on the streets catching people like we have done here.

"Well done to them and let this be a lesson to anyone considering fly-tipping our streets, we won't accept it."

Brent Council says its campaign is "beginning to yield results", with the number of fly-tipping incidents now decreasing.

As part of the government's Plan for Change, local authorities were given additional powers to clamp down on fly-tipping offenders.