New app developed to catch fly-tippers across Wales

An app has been developed to crackdown on fly-tippers, which costs the Welsh taxpayer £2m a year.

Council waste officers will use a smart phone to log, photograph and plot fly-tipping incidents onto a GPS mapping system in real time.

It will pinpoint fly-tipping hotspots in Carmarthenshire, Gwynedd, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Newport, Denbighshire and Cardiff.

The current system logs data on to a spreadsheet.

The Flymapper was developed by Fly-tipping Action Wales.

Culprits face fines of up to £50,000 or imprisonment.

The current system records data on a spreadsheet but the app allows officers to upload images and pinpoint them to GPS locations, which shows hot-spots for fly-tipping.

'Target and combat'

"What it will give us, crucially, is the location of the incident, a photograph of the incident and the time it's being fly-tipped," said Fly-tipping Action Wales programme manager Gary Evans.

"It allows local authority officers now to be far more strategic in targeting resources to combat the problem."

Waste officer at Carmarthenshire council Mike Roberts added: "Various incidents have been mapped within the first month, and already benefits are apparent, the map illustrates the concentrations of incidents, and over time will allow for targeted campaigns to reduce fly-tipping in those areas."