Fly-tipping site to cost £350,000 to clear

Almost 150 homes will be built on the site in Wealdstone South

A north London council will have to spend almost £350,000 to remove tonnes of "industrial scale waste" that has been dumped on land earmarked for development, it has been revealed.

Harrow Council's planning committee has approved plans to build 149 new homes on the site of a former driving school in Wealdstone South which until 2023 had been used to park special needs minibuses.

The council-owned site has been the subject of continuous fly-tipping in recent years, it was heard during a council meeting.

Harrow Council's Labour opposition party accused the authority of not securing the site over the past 18 months, but the Conservative leadership said there was a limit to what it could do.

It was revealed at a council meeting on 27 February that the cost to remove all of the waste ahead of the development of Byron Quarter would cost £348,000.

The council-owned site used to be a minibus depot

Addressing the leadership at the meeting, leader of the Harrow Labour Group, councillor David Perry, said: "You are about to increase council tax by 4.99%.

"Of that increase, the first £348,000 raised will, in the coming weeks, go towards clearing an absolute dump of a site at the old driving school where tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of waste has been fly-tipped, dumped and left to rot for months on end."

He added: "Furthermore, the pond on that site is now likely contaminated and, given the sheer volume of waste, there is likely to be potentially dangerous and hazardous building and construction material on that site."

Harrow Council's Conservative leader, councillor Paul Osborn, said there had been "a criminal fly-tip" on the site.

"To be clear, the people doing the fly-tip were industrial in the scale that they did it, they forced entry on to the site and disposed of the [waste]," he said.

"There is a limit to what the council is able to do when it comes to securing these things."

He added: "The best way of securing these things and the best way of preventing it is to actually develop family homes and a nice development on that site."

When the administration took over, the site was used to store the vehicle fleet which is now kept at a main depot.