Original by Owen Evans, Daily Post - http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/fly-tippers-costing-ta…
Councils recorded a total of 5,975 incidents of fly-tipping - a 4.3 per cent rise compared with the previous year
Hundreds of thousands of pounds in taxpayers’ money is being forked out to clear up after fly-tippers.
Between them local authorities in North Wales paid £305,660 to tidy up illegally dumped waste across the region in 2016/17.
Councils recorded a total of 5,975 incidents of fly-tipping - a 4.3 per cent rise compared with the previous year.
But just three people were prosecuted in North Wales in relation to offences of fly-tipping - two in Denbighshire and one in Conwy.
Wrexham Council, Gwynedd Council, Flintshire Council and Anglesey Council failed to prosecute anyone.
Janet Finch-Saunders AM, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Local Government, expressed her concerns about the figures.
She said: “These figures speak for themselves. Welsh local authorities just cannot successfully prosecute fly-tipping offenders: a problem which is getting worse as the number of prosecutions have fallen by almost 40 per cent since 2014-15, and 10 authorities failed to prosecute a single offender.
“The decrease in the number of prosecutions coincides with an increase of more than a fifth in the number of incidents to 38,580.
“For obvious reasons, prosecuting fly-tipping offenders is extremely difficult, therefore it is incumbent on local authorities to take measures which will not exacerbate the Wales wide problem.”
Mrs Finch-Saunders said a rise in the number of fly-tipping incidents in Conwy when a year-long trial of monthly bin collections was taking place was not a surprise.
Conwy Council recorded a 25 per cent rise in recorded incidents.
A total of 1,351 incidents were recorded in 2016/17, compared with 1,078 in 2015/16.
The highest level of fly-tipping was seen in Anglesey, where a total of 2,010 incidents were recorded in 2016/17.
It cost the local authority £89,067 to clear up the mess.
The county saw a 9.8 per cent rise in the number of incidents recorded in 2016/17 compared with the previous year.
Wrexham Council saw just 186 incidents of fly-tipping - the lowest level recorded in Wales. They paid just £7,670 in clean-up costs.
The cost of the clean-up in 2016/17 remained around the same compared with 2015/16, where £303,644 was paid out.
David A Bithell, Lead Member for Environment and Transport at Wrexham Council, said: “We welcome the news that we continue to have low incidents of fly tipping compared to other authorities in North Wales.
“We take a proactive approach to tackling littering and fly-tipping – neither are acceptable.”
A spokesman for Isle of Anglesey County Council said the area has the third cleanest streets in Wales based on an independent annual inspection carried out by Keep Wales Tidy.
He said: "The council cannot speak for other local authorities in Wales but can only confirm that it records every incident it encounters efficiently as per Welsh Government requirements.
"The council does encounter high levels of small scale fly-tipping in certain areas of the Island on a daily basis. All incidents are investigated and where evidence is available enforcement staff do take further action."