£150k boost for Leeds, Calderdale, Doncaster and Rotherham fly-tipping crackdown

Calderdale Council had to spend £4,500 to clear this fly-tipped pile of tyres last May

Nearly £150,000 has been given to councils in South and West Yorkshire in a bid to to curb fly-tipping.

The cash is part of £775,000 being awarded to 21 council-run projects across England to crack down on those involved, the government said.

Calderdale, Leeds, Rotherham and Doncaster will have six months to get their initiatives under way.

The government said the grants would help fight fly-tipping which "blights communities and the environment".

Leeds City Council is to receive £49,954 from the government, which a council spokeswoman said would be used to fund a number of interventions.

Those included "improved CCTV to aid and support further fly-tipping prosecutions, and environmental improvements in rural areas to remove fly-tipping opportunities", she said.

More than 13,000 incidents of fly-tipping were reported in the Leeds City Council area in 2021-22, according to figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Meanwhile, in Calderdale, which saw more than 1,600 incidents in 2021-22, £37,955 is to be spent on improved CCTV to monitor specific roads.

Last May, 800 tyres which had been dumped at a site near Warley Moor Reservoir had to be cleared by Calderdale Council at a cost of £4,500.

Councils have six months to roll out their schemes to tackle illegal waste dumping using the funding

Doncaster, which, according to Defra figures, saw 3,674 fly-tipping incidents in 2021-22, is to receive a total of £25,662 in government funding to help deal with the problem.

Among the plans are the transformation of an area used for illegal dumping into a community garden.

Additionally, Rotherham, which saw more than 5,000 reported fly-tipping incidents in 2021-22, will receive £35,188 to fund improved CCTV and highway works to reduce the number of possible fly-tipping locations.

The government said it had increased financial penalties for those caught dumping waste illegally, adding that enforcement actions by local authorities had risen by 11% in 2021-22.

The new funding comes following grants awarded last year, which Environment Minister Rebecca Pow MP said had been a "big success".

"Which is why we are expanding this scheme to help more local authorities around the country take the fight to waste criminals," she said.

"Fly-tipping is a cynical crime which blights communities and the environment."