A FLY-TIPPER used his own doorstep as a makeshift builders’ yard costing thousands of pounds worth of clean-up costs, a Bradford court was told.

Gerry McCann, 50, was caught on CCTV as he tipped repeated van loads of building waste straight onto a street in West Bowling, said Bradford Council prosecutor Aneeka Sarwar.

Magistrates were shown photos of Mr McCann reversing a Daewoo tipper truck up to the end of the street before unloading the waste between September and October 2016.

Mrs Sarwar said that the clean-up cost to Bradford Council amounted to £1,400.

Mr McCann pleaded guilty to six offences of depositing controlled waste without a licence.

Keith Blackwell, for Mr McCann, said that his client was a traveller who had been working as a builder and living at the time in a caravan in the same street as he dumped the waste.

He said that his client did not have a builders’ yard, and had intended to sort through the waste with the intention of recycling some of the stone before disposing of it all elsewhere.

Mr Blackwell said that none of the waste was harmful and it did not damage the local environment in a big way.

He said: “It is not Bradford’s best boulevard, it is a scratty little cul-de-sac which goes nowhere.”

After Mr McCann was evicted from the cul-de-sac and moved his caravan to the nearby Mary Street traveller site, Bradford Council stepped in to clear up the waste.

Magistrates committed Mr McCann to the Crown Court for sentence

Mr McCann, who now lives on a caravan site in Coventry, was bailed.

Coun Sarah Ferriby, the Council’s Executive Member for Healthy People and Places, said: “

The problem of fly-tipping is one that is infuriating every community and damaging the environment from inner-city back streets to idyllic country lanes, and we are determined to do what we can to tackle it.”