Fife Council say fly-tipping reports are down by 30 per cent

Fife Council said there had been a four-fold increase in demand with more than 30,000 larger items, such as furniture, mattresses and fridges, collected from the kerb since April.

And a report to the environment, transportation and climate change scrutiny committee added: "It’s likely that some of this uplifted material would otherwise have been illegally dumped by irresponsible residents or unscrupulous commercial disposal companies."

Councillors were given a progress report since the approval of a new environmental vandalism strategy, a mix of prevention and enforcement measures, in February last year.

Between April and September the safer communities team dealt with 1,260 abandoned vehicles, 218 contaminated gardens, 303 complaints of dog fouling, 1,671 incidents of illegal dumping and 32 littering offences.

Councillors were told that, instead of fly-tipping items they don't want, more residents are taking advantage of Fife Council's free bulky uplifts. (Image: Fife Council)

That led to 54 fixed penalty notices being issued - 25 for fly-tipping, 21 for littering and eight for dog fouling.

Nigel Kerr, head of protective services, said a new Scottish Government strategy would also help them crack down on offenders, with proposals to more than double fines to £500 and a "game changer" amendment to the littering from vehicles laws.

Mr Kerr told councillors: "Currently in Scotland we can only issue a fixed penalty for the person that throws the litter from the vehicle which, as you can imagine with a moving vehicle, it's really difficult to identify the person doing that.

"The change to the legislation will allow local authorities to serve the fixed penalty on the registered keeper of the vehicle and we can get that information from Police Scotland."

To help catch environmental vandals on camera in Fife they now have, after delays due to "data protection and technical issues", seven re-deployable CCTV systems to focus on hot-spot areas, such as the "worst affected" recycling points.

He explained: "For example if we get a lot of contamination from business waste we'll get our waste duty care team to follow that up with the local businesses.

"We've also got re-deployable CCTV cameras which are now going out to some of the recycling points as if there is fly-tipping taking place, can we get number plates or can we get images of people actually dumping at these waste sites and take action?

"We anticipate the new technology will provide us with really good evidence and allow us to take enforcement action where it's required."

Since April, the safer communities team at Fife Council have dealt with 1,260 reports of abandoned vehicles. (Image: Pixabay)

The committee was also told that, up to the end of September, 45 referrals were made by Cireco Scotland, who operate the council's landfill and recycling sites, where "vehicles were banned due to suspected illegal use of a recycling centre".

From these, 19 cases have now been resolved with 14 found to be individuals using the recycling centres for domestic use only and five were "found to be commercial businesses".

Mr Kerr's report gave more details on the Scottish Government's National Litter and Flytipping Strategy, a six year plan that was launched in June with the aim of identifying, targetting and stopping fly-tippers.

Proposals include increasing fixed penalty notices to £500 and new legislative powers to tackle littering from vehicles, seize vehicles involved in fly-tipping offences and issue fines for breaching obligations in relation to household waste.

Mr Kerr said the strategy from Holyrood was "not as far reaching" as Fife's - councillors had previously complained the council was "too slow" to act on fly-tipping and dog fouling - but added that more partnership working would help "in the fight against environmental vandalism".

And to emphasise the scale of the task for the council in keeping our streets and communities free of litter, he pointed out: "There are 148 cleansing operatives serving almost 7,000 litter bins across 16,100 streets in Fife.

"That's quite a challenge."