Recorded incidents of fly-tipping, have plunged in the Linlithgow ward in the last three months.
Neighbourhood Environment Teams (NETs) land and countryside officers recorded only 12 reports of fly-tipping in ward from 1 July to 30 September this year. That compares with 32 for the same period in 2021.
Delivering his report for the NETs operations to a meeting of Linlithgow Local Area Committee, Countryside manager Andy Johnston did add a note of caution that some of the uplifts from the last three months may have gone directly to waste contractors rather than through council transfer stations.
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His report added: “The table covers the period of strike action when any fly- tipping would have been taken direct to the contractor’s site instead of the council's transfer stations, and is not included in the figures.”
But Mr Johnston told the meeting: “Some good news in terms of fly-tipping. There’s been significantly less incidents reported in 2022 compared with the same period last year. For Linlithgow it's the lowest number of incidents across all the wards. It’s just around the 2 percent mark for the West Lothian total, so it's good for the ward.”
However, there were sizeable increases across other wards. The totals reported for the summer of 2022 were 517, only marginally down on the 526 for last summer.
Only the East Livingston and East Calder reported similar drops down from 144 last year to 118 this summer. The largely rural East Calder area usually has the worst figures for fly-tipping.
Fly-tipping has grown steadily across West Lothian, and Scotland, in the last few years. In Linlithgow the number of reported incidents in 2017 was 55. That had doubled to 110 for 2021.
The council has adopted a regular programme of publicity campaigns to warn householders against using " white van man" type disposals and warns that it is the householder who faces prosecution and fines if their material is found dumped.
The total costs to the council this summer were £34.574 compared to £41,764 last year.
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