MORE money is being invested to tackle fly tipping - an issue Councillors say impacts the whole district, from inner city streets to countryside lanes.

At a meeting of Bradford Council on Tuesday evening, members voted to boost the budget to tackle fly tipping by £100,000, which will, amongst other measures, allow the Council to buy fifteen new mobile cameras that are able to capture the registration numbers of vehicles involved in fly tipping.

At the meeting Councillors spoke of how tipping blights communities across Bradford.

Council Leader Susan Hinchcliffe said: “Fly tipping is selfish, illegal and the people who do it don’t care about where they live or where other people live.

“Every members of this Council shares my frustration about this selfish behaviour.

“This is a national crisis that costs taxpayers across the country £57 million a year.”

Mile-long trail of 90 bags left by fly tippers in Cottingley

She pointed out the growing problem of unscrupulous waste removal businesses who advertise on social media - taking money to dispose of waste only to dump it illegally.

She added: “My advice to anyone who receives a flyer or offer to remove waste on social media that if it seems too good to be true it probably is. There are always other options. The vast majority of businesses are responsible with how they dispose of waste, but some take a short cut.

“Money we spend to deal with fly tipping is money that could have been spent on vital services.

“Why people think they can do this is baffling. They are certainly not concerned about being good citizens. We want to take an approach where we are saying ‘enough is enough.’

“But there is not one overall solution. We need to throw less away and up-cycle more items.”

Members were told that since 2016 the Council had crushed three vehicles and carried out 93 prosecutions in relation to fly tipping.

Eighty per cent of prosecutions were secured thanks to camera footage.

The Council was told the new cameras would be mobile, able to be deployed throughout the district.

Councillor Martin Love (Green, Shipley) said it was important that fly tippers are handed stiffer sentences. Nationally nobody has been handed the maximum sentence of a £50,000 fine or 12 months in prison.

In November a fly tipper was fined £850 after a large amount of waste was dumped on Norbury Road, Ravenscliffe.

Cllr Love said: “Often people get a slap on the wrist at best.

“Small fines will be inconsequential to a professional fly tipper.”

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland (Lib Dem, Idle and Thackley) said she regularly drove through rural areas of the district, such as Oxenhope, and was amazed how much fly tipping there was in these areas.

She added: “The amount of crap you see in these areas just thrown out of cars shocked me.

“Cameras won’t make that much of a difference.”

She also referred to the Council’s recent anti litter campaign that s

aw signs saying “Don’t be a tosser” placed on major roads around the District.

“No matter how many signs you put up or no matter how many times you call people tossers, they’ll still do it.”

She suggested the Council adopt a register of private landlords to make it easier to tackle domestic fly tipping.

Cllr Hinchcliffe said restrictions on local Councils would make it difficult to introduce a register of landlords.

Councillor Paul Sullivan (Cons, Bingley Rural) said: “We need to make fly tipping socially unacceptable. People might see Bingley Rural as an out of the way area, but we have fly tipping problems here too. Lee Lane is a rural road between Cottingley and Bingley and unfortunately it is ideal for selfish people to dump rubbish. Recently 100 bin liners with the remnants of a cannabis farm were dumped on this road.”

The extra funding approved by the Council will also see also see areas that are blighted by fly tipping blocked off to traffic by the installation of bunds, fences or “bouldering.”

And enforcement activity will be stepped up against private land owners and landlords who allow their property to become fly tipping hot spots.