{"id":447941,"date":"2026-02-27T05:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T05:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/447941\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T05:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T05:10:09","slug":"row-over-lack-of-bristol-city-council-fly-tipping-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/447941\/","title":{"rendered":"Row over lack of Bristol City Council fly-tipping enforcement"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Labour budget amendment a year ago has gone nowhere<\/p>\n

15:56, 26 Feb 2026Updated 16:30, 26 Feb 2026<\/p>\n

\"Rubbish<\/p>\n

A recent fly-tip in Bristol (Image: Bristol Labour)<\/p>\n

A row has erupted after it emerged Green-led Bristol City Council has failed to install five new fly-tipping enforcement cameras in known hotspots and raise littering spot fines by \u00a3100 despite support from full council a year ago.<\/p>\n

Opposition Labour<\/a> secured backing for a budget amendment in February 2025 for more investment to tackle the scourge.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives<\/a> and Lib Dems<\/a> voted in favour, with the Greens against, leaving the decision at 34-34, but the lord mayor\u2019s casting vote carried the proposals.<\/p>\n

However, a report to the environment and sustainability committee this evening (Thursday, February 26) says none of the suggestions had been implemented because officers had deemed them unnecessary \u2013 despite the political cross-party support from elected councillors.<\/p>\n

The report says alternative plans had been found that would be more useful and cost-effective, including hiring more people to monitor the council\u2019s existing wide network of CCTV in the first place as this is where the crucial shortage is.<\/p>\n

It has sparked a war of words ahead of the meeting, with Labour accusing the Greens of \u201csitting on their hands\u201d doing nothing about it for a year, and the Greens hitting back by calling Labour \u201chypocrites\u201d for cutting fly-tipping enforcement under its previous administration.<\/p>\n

Labour group leader Cllr Tom Renhard ( Horfield<\/a> ) said: \u201cThe Green-led council is refusing to install anti fly-tipping cameras because it would apparently cost too much to monitor them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t buy it. It would not be overly onerous or expensive to have five more cameras monitored.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo put this in perspective, Bristol Waste cleared over 11,000 incidents of fly-tipping last year, costing local taxpayers almost \u00a31million.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the Greens took office, residents who believe street litter is a problem in Bristol has reached a staggering 96 per cent in deprived communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe council has found the money for new executive director salaries, failed privatisation attempts, and to correct typos in their council tax letters. It can find the money to clean up our streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said there was a wider concern about democratic process because not only was Labour\u2019s budget amendment approved, so was its motion to full council the following month, in March 2025, with further measures to crack down on fly-tipping.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet, the Greens have refused to implement it \u2013 instead coming back with another attempt to bin the policy,\u201d Cllr Renhard said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCouncillors decided the city needed more action on fly-tipping \u2013 it needs to be delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Environment committee vice-chair Cllr Kirsty Tait (Labour, Hartcliffe<\/a> & Withywood) said: \u201cThe Greens objected to this proposal and refused to implement it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, after a year of sitting on their hands, they\u2019ve looked into it and brought back a report that says \u2018an additional five [cameras] are not required at this stage\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a baffling conclusion. I don\u2019t know what planet they\u2019re living on.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeak to anyone, anywhere in Bristol, and they\u2019ll be able to point you to a fly-tip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Committee chair Cllr Martin Fodor (Green, Redland) said: \u201cBristol Labour\u2019s hypocrisy remains unmatched.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrucks to collect fly-tipping were cut by the previous Labour administration and that\u2019s the reason that, as Cllr Tait says, anyone can point you to a fly-tip.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, this Green-led council will spend \u00a3400,000 on improving street cleansing and to get trucks back on Bristol\u2019s streets \u2013 in a budget which, bizarrely, Bristol Labour voted against.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore CCTV cameras will not be a good use of public money, as Labour are aware.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is needed is funding for more people monitoring the CCTV that already exists so more people can be prosecuted, which is exactly what residents want.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile they clutch at straws to attack the Greens to distract from their failing government, Greens will get on with the business of making sure fly-tipping collection continues to improve and catching the criminals responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officers are advising the committee to say no to the five extra fly-tipping cameras, instead boosting the CCTV monitoring and inspection team, and raise littering fixed penalty notices from \u00a3150 to \u00a3175 instead of the \u00a3250 agreed in Labour\u2019s budget amendment last year.<\/p>\n

Their report said the 2026\/27 budget approved this month included more money for waste and recycling services, including an additional fly-tip collection round, and bolstering the council\u2019s operations centre to deploy existing CCTV to fly-tipping hotspots.<\/p>\n

It said: \u201cEvaluation of the current CCTV deployment indicates that the council already has sufficient redeployable\/mobile enforcement cameras.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, there is an insufficient revenue budget to operate these assets to their full potential. Installing additional cameras without funding for monitoring and investigation would be unlikely to deliver improved enforcement outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdding more cameras would not meaningfully improve enforcement without sufficient funding to redeploy them to hotspots as required (at a cost of \u00a31,000 per camera). Annual maintenance and 4G network access costs are circa \u00a314,000 per annum per camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cAllocating funding to expand the Operations Centre capability by appointing officers dedicated to fly-tipping monitoring and investigation would significantly improve the council\u2019s ability to utilise CCTV effectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn additional five [cameras] are not required at this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report said evidence from other councils and specialist and legal advice indicated that increasing littering spot fines from \u00a3150 to \u00a3250 would actually reduce the amount of income because fewer people would pay and more cases would have to go to court, which is expensive for the authority, so they should be raised to only \u00a3175.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Labour budget amendment a year ago has gone nowhere 15:56, 26 Feb 2026Updated 16:30, 26 Feb 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[14747,61,1397,48375,146634,49984,2053,3596,229,104400,90,56,54,55,90296],"class_list":{"0":"post-447941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-bristol-city-council","9":"tag-conservative-party","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-green-party","12":"tag-hartcliffe","13":"tag-horfield","14":"tag-labour-party","15":"tag-liberal-democrats","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-redland","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-unitedkingdom","22":"tag-withywood"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}