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Has the countryside become a dumping ground?
IF Bill Bryson has decided to criticise England, you know things must be bad.
IF Bill Bryson has decided to criticise England, you know things must be bad.The self-confessed Anglophile generally has nothing bad to say about our little island, and admitted that when he first came to Britain in 1972, he was "instantly smitten".
But 34 years later, he is beginning to have a change of heart.
"It's just not the place that I fell in love with," he had said.
The reason Bryson has fallen out of love with our country is simple – the litter.
Bryson is the president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and last week was the host of a Panorama programme called Notes on a Dirty Island.
In it he discussed the problem of litter and fly-tipping, particularly in rural areas.
Fly-tipping is a huge problem nationally, and costs more than 120 million a year to clear up.
In Peterborough it is hard to gauge the cost of clearing up instances of fly tipping because there is no specific budget for it – it falls into the department which deals with street cleansing.
But between August 2007 and July 2008, there were 8,472 incidents of fly-tipping across the area covered by Peterborough City Council.
There is some suggestion that fly-tipping is on a downward trend, as between April and July 2007 there were 3,944 incidents, but for the same period this year had reduced to 2,209.
But clearly, even this is 2,209 incidents too many.
The waste which is dumped can range from food from houses to dangerous items such as asbestos, gas cylinders and car tyres.
Is your village being blighted by fly-tipping? Or are people passing through giving your home town a litter problem?
If you want to talk about litter, call Hannah Gray on 01733 588726 or e-mail hannah.gray @peterboroughtoday.co.uk or add your comments below:
A vote took place on August 20th, 2008 in The Evening Telegraph and on PeterboroughToday.co.uk:
Has the countryside around Peterborough become a dumping ground?
Result: Yes 94%, No 6%
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Factfile: Litter and our environment
Fixed Penalty Notices were introduced in Peterborough in 2007.
The city council's litter wardens are employed by an agency,
X Four, and patrols take place across the area.
n The wardens can give spot fines, which are 75 to start with, and are discounted to 50 if you pay within 21 days.
The fines can be issued for litter as small as cigarette ends.
The city council gets the money from the tickets, and pays X Four 35 per ticket issued. X Four then pays the wardens.
Any money left over from the fines goes towards administration, and any extra beyond this to pay for educational material such as signs and leaflets.
When it comes to fly-tipping, if the waste can be tracked back to you, then you will be invited in for a recorded interview. From here, the type of enforcement action you can receive can include a warning letter, a fixed penalty notice, a caution, or even prosecution in court
Related: BBC - Panoroma: Notes on a Dirty Island, 11 August 2008.
Campaign to Protect Rural England - www.cpre.org.uk.
Mark Horsley, who is the senior street scene officer at Peterborough City Council (PCC), believes this is all so unnecessary.
He said: "In most instances there's no real need for them to do that because we provide a service for the collection of household bulky items. We also have the facility to dispose of items at Dogsthorpe at the Household Waste Recycling Centre."
According to Alison Ivatt, the team leader for the environment enforcement team at PCC, one of the current worrying trends across the city and the rural areas is for residents to use odd- job men, so-called white van men, to dispose of their waste.
What many residents do not realise is that these odd-job men may not be licensed to take away waste and may therefore be dumping it once they have been paid.
The council does not simply remove the waste and, instead, spends time looking through it to see if they can find anything which may link it to someone.
If the waste can be traced back to the resident, it is possible that it is the householder who will get in trouble.
Alison said: "The duty of care falls on the person whose waste it is. They should ensure that the person who is taking the waste is a registered waste carrier."
You can check whether or not a person is licensed on the Environment Agency website.
Alison said the issues surrounding fly-tipping are complex.
"It's the expense of having to clear up, generally it's the impression you get when you come into the villages or city.
Rural police have their work cut out
PC Norman McCallum knows a thing or two about fly-tipping.
He is a rural neighbourhood policing team constable covering 22 villages across the wards of Barnack, Glinton and Wittering and Northborough. Pc McCallum said: "I have seen anything from 40 tyres dumped in one spot, to builders' waste to rotten meat in ditches.
"In some cases the city council will remove the waste, but on occasions farmers or landowners become responsible and have to pay for the clear up of someone else's waste.
"We have had fly-tipping as a rural neighbourhood panel priority for my wards recently, and we have worked with the city council environment department to identify 'grot spots' and get the waste cleared as quickly as possible.
"We have asked residents through e-cops, Neighbourhood Watch and other channels to call either the police or the council when they witness fly-tipping in progress so we can take positive action against these offenders.
"Many residents are not aware that they should be checking that the person removing their waste has a waste carriers licence. Residents too can commit offences by not using licensed carriers."
George is keeping streets clean
LITTER might not be as dramatic as a big pile of car tyres dumped down a country lane, but it's still a nuisance.
In rural areas it is very often not the residents who casually discard litter, but people driving through.
Mark Horsley said: "People tend to throw litter out of car windows too readily for my liking, it's not going to hurt them to keep it in the car but inevitably it ends up out the window."
One way the council is dealing with rural litter is through the Fixit service. This is manned by two council workers, who do both proactive and reactive work in clearing litter and making any minor repairs in villages such as fixing benches.
But in Wansford, near Peterborough, the parish council decided to take matters into their own hands and has appointed a litter warden, 82-year-old George Wingrove.
George dons his reflective jacket and heads out for four hours a week, making sure litter is removed from hotspots such as by the historic bridge and the old Lincoln road.
David Stuart-Mogg, from the parish council, said it was rubbish such as drinks bottles, cartons and fast food wrappers that were causing problems.
"Literally the stuff was piling up at the side of the roads and we had to take some action," he said. "So we advertised for somebody to sweep up the village and George volunteered, and he's been doing a marvellous job ever since.
"We can't praise highly enough the job he's been doing. When I go down to get the paper at 7am, I see him down there in all weathers."
So why does David think that people are so casual about throwing out their rubbish?
He said: "It's easier to throw it out the window than to stop the car and put it in a litter bin and I suppose the attitude is 'it's not my village anyway'."
Next page: West Deeping vilagers walk to keep area tiday
To report fly-tipping in Peterborough, visit www.peterborough.gov.uk or call 01733 747474.Vilagers walk to keep area tiday
THE residents of West Deeping, near Market Deeping, know they've got a lovely village – and they want it to stay that way.
To this end, twice a year, members of the West Deepings Walkers (WDW) head off on a litter pick to tidy up the verges of the roads around the village.
Annie Newbigging, from WDW, said: "The village itself is usually quite clear of litter, it was the roads coming into and going out of the village that really got quite horrible."
The rubbish which they find on the side of the road is mostly waste thrown out of car windows, for example food wrappings and drinks cartons, but it can be bits of the cars themselves, including bits of broken bumper.
The number of people who head out to do the litter pick can vary, but is usually something between six or eight, and between them they can collect eight or 10 bags of rubbish.
Annie said that the litter is not a huge problem, but rather the litter picking is part of an effort to ensure the village stays clean and tidy.
"On occasion, we do win the best kept village competition and we're very proud of our village and the community support we've got here at West Deeping," she said. There's the effect on wildlife when it's in rural areas, and the perception for the public about how safe it is if it looks untidy."
As well as Alison's team to investigate fly-tipping, and Mark's to remove it, the council has recently taken delivery of a new weapon against this scourge of the countryside – mobile CCTV equipment.
This can be placed in rural areas and all across the city if there are instances of fly-tipping, to ensure Alison and her team have a way of gathering solid evidence about who is doing it.
But she is keen that the public still do their bit.
"We're still encouraging the public to report it if they identify anyone fly tipping," she said.
To report fly-tipping in Peterborough, visit www.peterborough.gov.uk or call 01733 747474.
Is your village being blighted by fly-tipping? Or are people passing through giving your home town a litter problem?
If you want to talk about litter, call Hannah Gray on 01733 588726 or e-mail hannah.gray @peterboroughtoday.co.uk or add your comments below:
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