{"id":237609,"date":"2025-10-20T02:38:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T02:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/237609\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T02:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T02:38:10","slug":"lack-of-action-on-fly-tipping-by-bridgend-council-frustrating-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/237609\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack of action on fly-tipping by Bridgend council frustrating residents"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HuwHuw Griffiths<\/p>\n

In 2023-24, Bridgend Council recorded 1,510 incidents of fly-tipping<\/p>\n

Many residents have “given up” reporting incidents of fly-tipping to a Welsh local authority due to lack of action on the issue, campaigners have said.<\/p>\n

It comes as new figures show that Bridgend Council has not prosecuted anyone for fly-tipping for almost 10 years, despite receiving over 1,500 reports a year of rubbish being dumped.<\/p>\n

“We’ve tried over the years to push them… but they’re not prepared to take action,” said Huw Griffiths of Coity Wallia Commoners’ Association.<\/p>\n

Bridgend Council said it had shifted its focus towards prevention and education in recent years, given “the resources that remain available to us”.<\/p>\n

In 2023-24, Bridgend Council recorded 1,510 incidents of fly-tipping, a slight reduction on the 1,600 reported in the previous year.<\/p>\n

But despite those occurrences, it was now almost a decade since the council prosecuted anyone.<\/p>\n

Mr Griffiths, who is retired but previously worked for the Environment Agency, said the inaction of Bridgend Council “doesn’t surprise” him.<\/p>\n

“We’ve tried over the years to push them into action over fly-tipping,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But they told us they were not prepared to take action unless it’s on council-owned property.<\/p>\n

“The [fly-tipping] figures are probably not accurate anyway, because people locally have given up on reporting it – they’ve given up contacting the council because they haven’t been addressing it.”<\/p>\n

In 2020 Coity Wallia Commoners’ Association won a private prosecution over fly-tipping on nearby farmland, in what was believed to the first case of its kind in Wales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"HuwHuw Griffiths<\/p>\n

Bridgend Council says it investigated all instances of reported fly-tipping and waste issues<\/p>\n

But five years on, Mr Griffiths, the group’s secretary, said they had been continually “frustrated” by further incidents which have since gone unpunished.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had people fly-tipping bags of rubbish, and I know of cases where sheep have been killed from eating them,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had broken glass on the common, and the farmers getting together to clear it – there were four bin bags full of bottles and things like that.”<\/p>\n

While councils are responsible for clearing fly-tipping from public land, they do not have to clear waste from private land.<\/p>\n

Since Bridgend Council’s last prosecution for fly-tipping, neighbouring authority Neath Port Talbot had brought forward 139 cases, with the vast majority resulting in fines.<\/p>\n

Over the same period, Welsh government data indicates that Cardiff Council made 206 prosecutions, while Rhondda Cynon Taf had a total of 143.<\/p>\n

But the picture across Wales is mixed, with many recording only a handful of prosecutions a year – and Anglesey Council having none going back almost two decades.<\/p>\n

Bridgend council said it investigated all instances of reported fly-tipping and waste issues. But, by law, it had to “demonstrate that we have attempted to work with residents prior to issuing fixed penalty notices”.<\/p>\n

It said that there had been a reduction in the number of fly-tipping and waste incidents in the borough since 2022-23.<\/p>\n

The lack of prosecutions, it added, was due to an increased focus on prevention and education for people, on how to recycle and dispose of waste in a safe and responsible manner.<\/p>\n

It added: “While this approach is proving to be effective, wherever appropriate the authority will still seek to take action against offenders who refuse to use the waste and recycling system properly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Huw Griffiths In 2023-24, Bridgend Council recorded 1,510 incidents of fly-tipping Many residents have “given up” reporting incidents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-237609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}