Croydon Council spent about £1m last year clearing fly-tipped waste and is deploying enforcement officers empowered to issue on-the-spot fines and trace addresses for prosecution. Officers will inspect dumped rubbish for identifying information to return to perpetrators and pursue legal action. Piles of waste including a mattress, a chair and food waste are reported in Thornton Heath, creating strong odours and visual blight for local residents. Clearing fly-tipped waste significantly drains council resources. The council links rising incidents to a lack of social responsibility while some residents cite irregular bin collections as a contributing factor.
"The stench is too much," she said. "I wake up in the morning open my blinds and the first thing I see is all this rubbish, it's very disgusting." Ms Otunuga, who has lived in Thornton Heath for more than 20 years, added: "It's getting worse. There's a mattress there, you've got all sorts of things that are meant to be in the bins. "It's not a good sight at all."
"We've put new officers on the street - eyes and ears on the street - who are going through the rubbish, looking for those addresses, so we that can go back to people find them and prosecute them," he said. He attributed the issue of fly-tipping to a "lack of social responsibility". "What we are finding increasingly is that people literally are dumping on their own doorsteps," he said. "It's not a minor problem. It's a really nasty experience for local residents."
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