Almost 8,000 reports of fly-tipping in Wolverhampton since 2016
More than 7,000 reports of fly-tipping have been reported to a council in less than two years, new figures show.
Figures released by Wolverhampton Council last month revealed that between January 2017 and August 2017 there were 3,443 reports of fly-tipping.
From March 2016 to December 2016 there were also 4,214 reports of the issue.
In total there have been 7,657 reports of fly-tipping in the city since March last year.
The council revealed that the overall total could be even higher, as they do not have figures for January 2016 to December 2016.
In their response to a Freedom of Information request made by the Express & Star, the council said: "It has been established that we do not hold all of the information.
"Thus, we are unable to provide information relating to January 2016 to March 2016 as our reporting system did not go live until March 2016."
However, the council also made clear that the figures relate to reports of flytipping as opposed to actual incidents.
This is because, they say, the same incident tends to be reported multiple times. They confirmed that there tends to be between 150-200 incidents per month on average.
Councillor Wendy Thompson, leader of Conservative group at the council said: "It is absolutely terrible and it costs a lot to get it put right.
"It creates total eyesores. How people can pull up and dump piles and piles of rubbish is beyond me.
"People need to take responsibility. They should feel appallingly about what they're doing to areas in Wolverhampton.
"There is no excuse and people have and will continue to be prosecuted and quite rightly so."
A spokesman for Wolverhampton council said: “Fly-tipping is a national problem and the City of Wolverhampton is by no means alone in dealing with this scourge on our neighbourhoods.
"The council works extremely hard to remove fly tipped waste and to catch the perpetrators.
"97 per cent of reports of fly tipped waste on public land is removed within five days and just this week we successfully prosecuted a fly tip case in court and the offender was hit with a fine.
"We know a lot of fly tipping is done by unscrupulous businesses who claim to be offering house clearances or similar and then just dump it.
"We need the cooperation of residents who might witness items being dumped to report details to us using our free Report It app, website or via our fly tip hotline: 01902 555685.”
The news comes as earlier this month it was revealed that only two councils in the Black Country and Staffordshire used strict new powers aimed at clamping down on fly-tipping in the first year they were available.
Those councils include Sandwell, Stafford Borough, Cannock Chase, Lichfield and South Staffordshire.
Across the UK local authorities have collected £750,000 in fines from illegal waste dumping since new Government legislation was introduced in May 2016.
Wolverhampton Council issued nine fines totalling £4,044 over the period, while Dudley Council brought in £360 from three fines.
Walsall Council did not respond to the data request.
The new law enables councils to issue on-the-spot penalty notices of up to £400 for offences.
In our recent poll, 81 per cent of the 31 people that voted thought that a £400 fine is not enough to discourage people from flyt-ipping.
Across England, the number of fly-tipping incidents have risen for three years in a row, government figures show, with councils reporting 936,090 cases in 2015/2016, up four per cent on the previous year.
