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West Lothian warning over illegal fly-tipping as clean-up costs hit £200,000

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorStuart Sommerville
Published date17 June 2022
Publication titleEdinburghLive (Scotland)
Dealing with the dumping in those months cost the council more than £50,000 to clear up - and the total cost for lifting fly-tipping across the county last year was around £200,000

And while the latest figures showed numbers of incidents appeared to be falling, a council spokesman urged people to dispose of rubbish correctly and reminded residents that fly-tipping was a criminal offence which can lead to a fine of up to £40,000.

However over the whole of last year the council issued just 22 fixed penalties and recovered fines totalling just £4,400.

Across all nine wards, from Linlithgow in the east to Armadale in the west and East Calder in the south, there were 337 reported fly-tippings between 1 February and 30 April - the same period in 2021 saw 878 reported incidents.

East Calder traditionally sees the most fly-tipping because it has a largely rural hinterland on the fringe of the Pentlands. This year's figures show costs for the ward of £8,098 to collect the 54 reported fly-tippings. For the same period in 2021, the costs were £18,138, to tackle 229 incidents.

In his report to the East Livingston and East Calder Local Area Committee, cleaner communities manager David Lees said: "We are unable to split costs over specific ward areas or from the other works they carry out, but can give the yearly cost for the NETs teams with an estimate of their time spent on fly tipping which we currently estimate as 45% of their time. For 2021 the estimate was 80% of their time."

Even though figures are starting to look better the council is keen to reinforce the message that fly-tipping is unacceptable. It is not the council as much as the people of West Lothian who bear the costs.

A spokesperson for the council told the Local Democracy...

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