Westminster Life: Cleaning up our Streets

Fly-tipping is one of the things people raise with me most often, whether it is dumped mattresses in alleyways or black bags left on the edge of our green spaces. It is a blight on our city, bad for the environment and our sense of pride, and it costs all of us money through higher clean-up bills and pressure on council budgets.

We need better action from the council and local agencies, but we also need to close loopholes in the law. That’s why I’m pleased the Government has set out tough new laws to tackle waste crime. After years of inaction that made it easy for rogue operators to undercut honest businesses and dump rubbish on our streets, we are finally seeing the action communities have been calling for.

At the heart of the reforms is a new permit system for anyone who carries, brokers or deals in waste. Instead of simply filling in a basic form, operators will need to prove who they are, pass criminal record checks and show they understand how to handle the waste they are dealing with. They will have to display their permit number clearly on their vans, adverts and websites so that residents and regulators can spot, at a glance, who is legitimate and who is not. And a new digital waste tracking system will create a clear trail from collection to disposal, making it much harder for illegal dumps to disappear into a fog of paperwork.

The Environment Agency will have stronger powers to revoke permits and take on the organised gangs who have treated waste crime as easy money for too long. The worst offenders will face up to five years in prison, while fly-tippers can be ordered to join “clean-up squads” to help clear the very streets and green spaces they have helped spoil.

All of this matters because places like Peterborough have been paying the price. Residents often tell me about dumped mattresses in alleyways, bags of household waste in service roads and builders’ rubble left on the edge of our estates. New figures show more than 10,000 recorded fly-tipping incidents in a year, more than double the England average, with nearly £100,000 spent on clean-ups that could have gone into local services instead. While recent enforcement work by the council has helped reduce the very largest incidents, everyday dumping is still far too common.

We also need to ensure these powers are used effectively locally. Thanks to volunteers and many councillors, we are getting more fly-tipping reported and the council is looking at extending free bulky waste collection days, which are already successful in places like Bretton and Dogsthorpe.

But we need to do more to prevent littering and to prevent fly-tipping. We need National Highways and Peterborough Council to work better together to clean up our roadsides. I also support calls for a Litter Strategy in the city.

By combining tougher national rules with local action on the ground, we can clean up our city, back honest businesses and restore pride in Peterborough’s streets, estates and green spaces.