Fly-tippers made to pick up own motorway rubbish in Staffordshire

The group was intercepted by officers after being spotted dumping the rubbish on CCTV

A group caught fly-tipping at the side of the M6 motorway were made to return to the scene to pick it up.

"Eagle-eyed" officers from Highways England spotted the three men dumping rubbish in an emergency bay at the Staffordshire junctions.

The Central Motorway Police Group (CMPG) tweeted it had then intercepted the vehicle before escorting them back to "clear their rubbish up."

Highways England said it was a "reckless abuse" of the emergency area.

The occupants of the Passat were stopped on Sunday between junctions 14 and 15 and taken back to junctions 12 and 13.

"We spotted this blatant and reckless abuse of one of our designated emergency areas on our CCTV system and quickly passed it to the police," James Hawkes, Highways England network operations manager for the Midlands, said.

"We continue to work closely with our police colleagues who enforce issues like this. Emergency areas are there for just that, an emergency.

"They're not there for people who fly-tip, which is highly irresponsible and illegal," he said.

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CMPG said details of the offence have been shared with the Environment Agency.

The officers were praised on social media for their "brilliant" work.

One Twitter user posted: "Excellent, more of this needs to happen."

Another added: "Guess it wasn't a clean getaway for them."