Letter of the week: Common sense needed to rid South Tyneside of fly tippers

Fly-tipping is a constant source of complaints by local residents.
A recent picture of rubbish dumped near Jarrow Riverside.A recent picture of rubbish dumped near Jarrow Riverside.
A recent picture of rubbish dumped near Jarrow Riverside.

The sight of rubbish irresponsibly dumped in our communities is unsightly and our area is devalued because of it.

The council’s restrictive and expensive services to take away furniture, appliances etc lead many to privateers, who collect anything at little to no cost, but only scrap material they can get paid for; this leaves the rest to be carelessly discarded in back streets, car parks and wooded areas in order to avoid paying fees.

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Related content: Two-year delay for South Tyneside's 'report a fly tipper' phone appThe council seem resigned to fly-tipping and other problems in the area as things that just happen, not something that can be resolved by thinking outside the box.

They prefer spending money they don’t have to investigate incidents and punish guilty parties; none of which help to eradicate the problem or provide a serious enough deterrent to those making a profit.

Related content: South Tyneside branded fly-tipping hot spotBut they haven’t even managed to do that, we’ve just found out that the rollout of an app announced over two years ago to help residents report rubbish dumping has been delayed.

In Brighton, a local authority which Greens are a part of, have introduced designated drop-off points throughout the area for residents to place unwanted items.

Council workers then regularly empty them at no cost.

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Last week's Letter of the week: "Let us show our friends up north how to win some silverware"This has drastically reduced fly-tipping incidents and has cut investigation and enforcement costs.

The Green Party would seek to introduce a similar scheme here in South Tyneside, along with many other common-sense solutions which stop punishing ordinary people and prevent unscrupulous individuals taking advantage of poor decisions made at local level.

Matthew Giles,

South Tyneside Green Party.