First £1,000 fly-tipping fixed penalty notice issued in Buckinghamshire

Buckinghamshire Council has announced that the first £1,000 fixed penalty notice has been issued in the county.

A man who dumped one black sack containing his own household waste in a layby in Denham, has become the first person to receive a four-figure fine for dumping rubbish.

Bucks Council announced the higher fines for people caught fly-tipping in December, in a bid to deter people from illegally ditching their rubbish.

A man from Bracknell in Berkshire stopped in a layby and dumped the sack on the A412 on 20 December 2023, just two days after the harsher penalties were introduced. Bucks Council says he waited until he thought the coast was clear and then dumped the sack at the roadside behind the car he was driving. A traffic monitoring camera recorded the incident and identified his car.

When tracked and interviewed by council officials he said he felt unwell and the smell from the sack was overpowering. However, the authority has pointed out that the waste in the sack (mainly drinks containers and wrappers) could have been freely recycled either at home or at a council recycling centre.

Councillor Thomas Broom said: “Buckinghamshire Council is determined to demonstrate its Zero Tolerance of fly-tipping, whether it be commercial criminal dumping or the kind of low-level stupidity we see in a case like this; we want to send a clear message to people that it will not be tolerated, and we will pursue you.

“For these lower-level cases, the offender’s admission means we can now deal with it at the fixed penalty level rather than prosecuting the case at court, meaning our officers are able to focus their efforts on more prolific offending. The culprit has paid the £1,000 and avoided court but is out of pocket by a large amount of money and will hopefully think twice about doing something like this again.

“The laybys on the A412 are regularly subjected to fly-tipping and the ditches can become clogged with dumped waste.”