The cost to clear up fly-tipping across West Lothian has been almost £50,000 in three months.
Huge loads of rubbish weighing 76 tonnes have been dumped in the West Lothian countryside recently, with ‘white van man’ suspects to blame.
While there have been fewer reports of fly-tipping in the Whitburn area, the workload facing council staff has been no lighter.
The tonnage has gone up as the number of reports has gone down.
Neighbourhood environment teams (NETs) staff point to ‘white van man’ offenders dumping larger loads.
Costs for the period from November 1, 2021, to January 31 this year in the Whitburn, Blackburn ward topped £3393, following 35 reports in the ward, out of a total of 511 reports county-wide.
For the same period the year before the figures were £3116 following 46 reports in the ward.
For the Whitburn ward that was a drop in the share of total enquiries – down to 6.8 per cent this quarter from 8.6 per cent of the 538 enquiries in the same period a year ago.
County-wide the totals for the most recent quarter show 76.42 tonnes of rubbish was lifted at a cost of £49,902. These figures compare with the same period last year which saw 55.5 tonnes lifted at a cost of £36,241.
Presenting the figures to Whitburn and Blackburn local area committee David Lees, cleaner communities manager said: “There have been fewer inquiries this quarter, but slightly larger loads. That points to white van man.”
This alludes to unscrupulous dealers taking waste with the promise of legal disposal but dumping it in the countryside.
Often it is bathroom or kitchen fittings, but also can be larger household items such as mattresses or furniture or simply bagged household waste.
Answering questions from Councillor Bruce Fairbairn, Mr Lees said bagged rubbish was checked for addresses in an attempt to trace it.
Even though it may not have been dumped by the original owners it is they who could face the £200 fine.
In her written report parks and woodland manager Eirwen Hopwood described the work carried out by the collection teams.
She said: “We are unable to split costs over specific ward areas or from the other works they carry out, but can give the yearly cost for the NETs teams with an estimate of their time spent on fly-tipping which we estimate as 60 per cent of their time.
“ For 2020 the estimate was 80 per cent of their time.”
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