Croydon’s prosecution record is the second worst in the whole of England – Inside Croydon

Purley Way accumulation: This massive fly tip next to a nature reserve and public footpath has been left to accumulate for nearly two years – with no action from the council or the Environment Agency. He took care of the tenant of the property

CROYDON IN CRISIS: Flyaways continue to worsen under the borough’s part-time mayor, according to official government figures, our environment correspondent PAUL LUSHION reports

Garbage Mayor: Jason Perry has increased Council Tax by 21% and wants to charge £5 for new bins. But it does nothing to deal with fly tipping

Three months ago, the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs (hereafter referred to as DEFRA) published, with little fanfare or public acclaim, a report on Flight reversal statistics for England, 2022 – 2023.

Indeed, the report attracted so little public attention Inside Croydon he missed it. So far.

Everyone (except the culprits) agrees that fly-tipping is bad and something should be done about it. The problem is that very little is being done to combat this environmental scourge, as can be seen on Croydon’s street corners and leafy streets.

For the year 2022-23, local authorities in England faced 1.08 million incidents of fly-tipping, a drop of just 1% on the 1.09 million reported in 2021-22.

About 42,000 flying spikes were “dump truck load” size or larger, up from 37,000 in 2021-22. This is fly tipping on an industrial scale, literally, with some fly tippers making money from the practice at the suffering and expense of others.

The cost to local authorities in England to clean up just these trucks was £13.2m, up from £10.7m in 2021-22. Almost two-thirds of fly tip material, according to the DEFRA report, is classified as household waste, which in theory could be recycled (or even incinerated).

Which shows that, in addition to being a rubbish government, the Tories’ waste-processing model isn’t working.

Embarrassed by these numbers, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government recently announced something that will have the tippers shaking in their boots. Not.

It’s official: DEFRA report shows Croydon is second worst in England for enforcement action against fly-tippers and worst in London

Councils can currently fine fly-tipping up to £1,000, while courts can impose unlimited fines and up to five years in prison for large-scale fly-tipping. The Conservatives’ big idea is to add up to six penalty points to a fly-tipper’s licence. Not that commercial fly sellers were ever all that bothered by the threat of being fined or jailed.

You can imagine the conversation in the cozy bar at the Dumpers’ Arms: ‘Bet on my licence, you say? I’m shitting myself as we speak.”

Dig into the piles of rubbish and into the basic details of the council’s performances and, to no one’s surprise, you will find that Croydon Council’s record for dealing with fly-tipping is poor.

In fact, under Tory Mayor Jason Perry, it is the worst in London.

Then you look at the number of fixed penalty notices issued (just 10 in 2022-23) compared to the total number of incidents (22,852).

That gives Croydon a penalty versus offense percentage of

0.0437598459653422%

In Enfield, they did it 92%

Croydon is bottom of the fixed penalty league in London, alongside Barnet, with just 10. Not even one a month. Enfield issued 5,096 FPNs.

So it’s not just about finding the culprits. It is about trying to find the culprits, something Perry’s part-time council has abandoned doing.

In the past, there have been rumblings that Croydon has somehow been “targeted” by the heirs. This is more likely to be true now that the commercial profiteers will have realized that with Mayor Perry in charge at City Hall, there is precious little chance that they will ever be caught, never prosecuted.

The worst hotspot for tipping incidents is Brent, where they have had over 34,000 tipping cases. In Croydon, it was less than 23,000.

Croydon actually managed to go backwards. The number of incidents in 2022-2023 fell by 14% compared to the previous year. However, total shares plummeted, down 53% from 2,078 in 2020 to 986 in Perry’s first year as part-time mayor.

Virtue signaling: councilors saying they have reported a fly tip overlooks the Tory council’s failure to prosecute

Likewise in the case of notification actions with a fixed penalty, where a decrease of 96% was recorded. Croydon Council just don’t care about fly tipping.

On our once green and pleasant land, our neighborhood stands on the spot second worst in England, which DEFRA highlighted in their press release (in 2019, Croydon was fourth worst…). Getting rid of the council’s dedicated anti-coup team came at a cost.

A few clearances of massive fly spikes have been undertaken, although this rarely, if ever, has anything to do with our council. Often by independent companies, as in the case of the steaming pile of filth that had been building up in a vacant car park on Purley Way for two years, while the toothless watchdog, the Environment Agency and Croydon Council stood by next door (it was private land, so implicitly the council was to sit on their hands and do nothing).

And within days of doing that cleanup, a chancellor in a dump truck was dumping another truck nearby, no doubt for a huge fee, cash-in-hand, and no fear of prosecution. action against them.

So the next time you see a third-rate politician tweeting about getting rid of fly swatters, don’t cheer them on or retweet them. Instead, ask why Croydon Council’s situation is so bad and what they are going to do about it.

And the next time poor piss Perry claims he’s “clearing a mess,” you’ll know he’s lying.

Read more: The council is finally starting work to clear its own Waddon fly tip
Read more: Desperate residents over spikes of vile flies, including a pig’s head
Read more: Collins deserves a new jersey as the fly tip figures begin to fall

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