£3m bill for cleansing district

£3m bill for cleansing district

23 September 2020

NEW figures published by Newry, Mourne and Down Council have revealed that the organisation spent almost £3m on district cleansing last year.

The figure — outlined at last night’s meeting of the local authority’s neighbourhood Services Committee — equates to a gross cost per household of just over £43.

Also at last night’s committee meeting, it was confirmed that almost £146,000 was spent last year on enforcement, with fixed penalty fines accruing £6,720 for local authority coffers.

The figures reveal that less was spent last year on enforcement, down from £146,288 in 2017/18 to £145,946.

Fly-tipping and dog fouling are major problems across the district with politicians and council officials keen to address the issue.

It was revealed recently that the district’s taxpayers have had to fork out over £43,000 to remove waste dumped illegally across the district.

The Environment Agency confirmed that Newry, Mourne and Down Council tops the fly-tipping league table and is far and away the worst area for people dumping their waste in fields, secluded areas and even along the roadside.

Province-wide, the total bill for removing waste from 11 council areas was almost £200,000 with only Antrim and Newtownabbey Council emerging with any credit as it did not have to spend a single penny in removing waste dumped illegally.

The majority of fly-tipping incidents are reported to and dealt with by local authorities with local politicians regularly condemning those who dump their waste illegally. 

They say they cannot understand the mentality of those who engage in such behaviour, calling for tougher penalties to be introduced on those who willingly break the law.

The councillors believe that the current £75 fine is simply not a strong enough deterrent for committing what is an environmental crime. 

They are also perplexed that people who dump their waste illegally refuse to take it to any of the district’s household recycling centres and won’t use the local council’s bulky refuse collection service for which there is a nominal charge of £10.50 to collect up to five items from people’s homes for disposal.

There was an upsurge in fly-tipping across Northern Ireland during the coronavirus lockdown when all civic amenity sites were closed. But there are concerns that illegal dumping is continuing, even though the facilities have reopened.