Fly-tipper who dumped bed by roadside fined £4,600

A man has been ordered to pay a total of £4,600 for dumping an old bed by the side of a road in north west London as part of a local council's crackdown on fly-tippers.

Naiffisa Abbas was photographed by a roadside camera leaving the bed, alongside other rubbish, at a known fly-tipping spot on Queensbury Park Road, Queensbury in March 2024.

Abbas, from Wembley, was found guilty at Willesden Magistrates' Court, where a judge added a further £2,000 to the initial fine because he failed to attend his hearing.

Brent Council says the fine sends a message that it "won't accept" fly-tipping.

The local authority says it has recently "ramped up" action on offenders by installing cameras at various hotspots and issuing 30% more fines.

More enforcement officers have been deployed and they have actively been touring the borough looking for evidence of offenders and fining them £1,000, the council says.

Last year, Brent Council declared a crackdown on what it called "selfish litter louts", after 35,000 cases of fly-tipping were recorded in the borough in 2022-2023.

The crime currently costs the local authority more than £1.5m each year, the Local Democracy Service reports.

Cabinet member for the environment, Krupa Sheth, said: "We are taking a zero-tolerance approach to fly-tipping, which means you will see more enforcement officers on the streets catching people like we have done here.

"Well done to them and let this be a lesson to anyone considering fly-tipping our streets, we won't accept it."

Brent Council says its campaign is "beginning to yield results", with the number of fly-tipping incidents now decreasing.

As part of the government's Plan for Change, local authorities were given additional powers to clamp down on fly-tipping offenders.

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