Shropshire Star

Fines for Mid Wales residents whose rubbish is fly-tipped, AM warns

Residents in Powys are being warned they risk fines if waste is given to unauthorised collectors.

Published
Joyce Watson

Even if items are passed on “in good faith”, and then the waste is fly-tipped households could face a fixed penalty notice of £300.

New rules were agreed yesterday by Assembly Members to help councils take further action against fly-tipping, discouraging householders from handing their waste to people not authorised to handle it.

Joyce Watson, Labour's Mid and West Wales AM said: “I want residents to be fully aware of these changes. Fly-tipping is a blight on our communities.

“We all need to take more responsibility for how our waste is disposed of, and this means asking questions of those that offer to take it away.”

Councils saw more than 35,000 incidents of fly-tipping in 2017-18, costing Welsh taxpayers £2 million in clean-up costs.

Currently, residents can be issued with a fixed penalty notice if they fly-tip their waste themselves.

A Welsh Government report suggests that 60 per cent of fly-tipping incidents originate from domestic households – often the result of the householder failing to check where the waste will end up when allowing an unauthorised person to take it away.