Residents in Bury are becoming increasingly frustrated with the level of fly-tipping in the area.
Emma Simms has been trying to sell a property near Manchester Road for the past two years but potential buyers have repeatedly refused to purchase the house because the land behind the property is used by fly-tippers to dump rubbish.
‘’There’s rats that eat the rubbish, there’s been human waste found, furniture that’s been left - like toilets - and it’s even been set on fire.’’
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According to a recent report, Bury has faced an increase in fly-tipping within the past 18 months, rising from 3,308 reports to 3,323. But despite the councils promise to crack down on perpetrators, residents are still facing piles of rubbish discarded on public and private land near their homes and in their communities which is having a huge impact.
Other residents have also found human health risks among the rubbish.
Gill Smith, who runs Radcliffe Litter Pickers spoke to the MEN about some of the things she'd found during her picks: ‘’The things we find the most is cannabis farms. We can find hundreds of plant pots. The compost we empty out and it gets spread out so it’s kind of recycled. That’s if it’s in a place it can be.’’
The local group has taken on the responsibility of clearing up rubbish in the area that has been dumped by fly-tippers.
’’The council, can’t pick everything up at once, there’s too much… We work together and we’ll clear what’s left behind.”
Emma has repeatedly tried to contact the council about the refuse behind her house, but she says they refused to collect it on the grounds that the land the rubbish has been thrown onto is private and therefore whoever owns the land is responsible for its removal. However, neither Emma nor the council could locate the landowner.
‘’The council were claiming it wasn’t their responsibility because they don’t own the land," she said. "But we went to our local MP and he said ‘it is actually your [the councils] responsibility’’
Once Emma had contacted her MP, James Daly, the rubbish was collected within two weeks she says. But it was only two days before the fly tippers returned.
As a result of the fly-tipping, Emma has suffered a huge financial burden. ‘’We had to reduce the price of the house because no one will buy it and then the estate agent has asked us to lower it again,” Emma said.
‘’Also, because we moved out of the property two years ago, we now have to pay double council tax.’’
Fly tippers can face fines of up to £50,000 and potentially a prison sentence but this doesn’t seem to deter them.
Jo Lancaster, Councillor for Ainsworth and Radcliffe North, said: ‘’There doesn’t seem to be much enforcement action in Bury. The council are not prosecuting people. In fact, there’s not really many enforcement officers in Bury, there’s not many people investigating, so it isn’t a big deterrent, it’s continuing.’’
According to national fly-tipping statistics, there was a 4% reduction in enforcement actions carried out by local authorities from 474,000 in 2019/20 to 456,000 in 2021/22.
The number of fixed penalty notices issued also decreased from 75,400 to 57,600 over the 4-year period.
Radcliffe Litter Pickers work with the council’s enforcement team to try and increase the chances of prosecution.
Gill said: ‘’We don’t look through it [the rubbish] because it can tamper with evidence, and we work closely with Bury council’s enforcement team who do a really good job. They go and investigate it… and see if there’s anything there that can be used for prosecution.’’
Jo says Bury's 3-week bin collection schedule has been partially blamed for the problem of fly-tipping in the area.
The long period of time between each bin collection causes the rubbish to pile up and people are contacting unlicensed waste disposal companies to remove it for them.
‘’In my opinion I think it’s due to people only having grey bins collected once every 3 weeks," she said.
‘’People are contacting unlicenced waste removal companies who are taking peoples rubbish and dumping it in the street.”
Gill thinks the low cost of unlicenced removal also contributes to the frequency of fly-tipping.
“It’s easy for unscrupulous people to get a van, it’s quite easy to get a licence or even work unlicenced and just say to people ‘yeah, I’ll move your stuff for £50. And if they’re charging you such a low amount, it’s not being disposed of properly.’’
Coun Alan Quinn said Bury Council have cleared the site three times under the H&S statutory nuisance environmental powers, not under fly tipping rules.
In a statement he explained: "The council does not clear fly tipping from private land, it's the responsibility of the land owner, and there is absolutely no link to increases in fly tipping to the three weekly residual bin collection introduced in 2013. There is no link, according to Defra of increased fly tipping when GM introduced the van permit system at the HWRCs either.
"Fly tipping is a criminal offence dealt with in a Magistrate's Court where the burden of proof is "beyond all reasonable doubt" as against the "balance of probability".
"Bury Council has fined offenders when we catch them. If I had more enforcement officers, I could do more, but Bury Council has been hit by £143m worth of cuts from (the) government."
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