Furious builder is fined £500 by council busybody for flytipping after he left two empty sacks on grass verge while renovating house

Daily Mail​

02-07-2025

An angry builder has been handed a £6,500 fine for flytipping - after renovating a home but leaving two empty sacks on a grass verge.
Frank Brown, 63, has hit out after receiving the penalty - saying he put the heavy-duty bags on the patch of land to avoid blocking the driveway where he was working.
The sacks, containing a few inches of sand, were outside the property on a road in Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, for three days before he was fined.
Mr Brown is now refusing to pay - insisting he always had the intention of taking the sacks with him after the job was finished.
The grandfather-of-two said: 'It's madness - I wasn't flytipping.
'I was carrying out quite a big building job on a house and we had a skip and the customers had two cars so space was limited.
'I put the empty sacks on a grass verge just outside the front of the house. They were there for three days before I got fined.
'An enforcement agent knocked on the bay window and said he wanted to speak to me about the fly-tipping and pointed at the bags.
'I said to him, "Okay, mate, I'm sorry if there's been a misunderstanding, I'll remove them now" - but he said, "No, it's too late".
'The official just said, "I'm writing you a fine for £500 for fly-tipping".
'I was shocked and couldn't believe there was no common sense being applied..'
He received a Fixed Penalty Notice from Broxtowe Borough Council on June 24.
Mr Brown, who has run his building firm for 30 years, said: 'I was so shocked, I told my wife and she wrote a post about what happened and put it on Facebook.
'We had lots of responses from people who had also been fined.
'It's just bullying tactics - it was like the official who fined me was waiting to pounce, he just didn't seem to have any feelings.
'It was really upsetting. My wife was really upset and we can't afford to pay this.'
The fine was issued by Waste Investigations Support and Enforcement, a company that works with more than 40 local authorities.
WISE says it issues people with FPNs for offences such as littering and dog fouling, while describing having 'an impressive 79 per cent payment rate'.
Mr Brown is now being backed by a legal expert who says the FPN should be void because the building materials were not technically waste.
Lawyer Michael Orlik, who specialises in highways, said: 'It has been issued because the builder is alleged to have deposited waste unlawfully, contrary to the Environmental Protection Act.
'But under section 75, external, waste means any substance or object which the holder discards.
'Clearly the builder has not discarded these bags, so it's not waste. They should cancel it, having found out their mistake.'
A Broxtowe Borough Council spokesperson said: 'The council uses a third party contractor, WISE, for enforcement on flytipping and littering in the borough and are therefore unable to comment on individual cases.'
Official figures recently suggested flytipping in England has risen to its highest level in almost 20 years.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed vowed to toughen up enforcement after reported cases of illegal dumping passed 1.15million in 2023-2024.
The figure is an increase of six per cent from the 1.08million the previous year and the highest level in the six years since the current method for reporting was brought in.
The statistics also revealed a year-on-year fall in the number of fixed penalty notices issued for flytipping and a decline in the number of court-issued fines.
Analysis of the data revealed London as a major hotspot, with eight boroughs in the top 10 local authorities for overall dumping and the highest proportion by population.
The London Borough of Croydon was said to be the flytipping capital of the UK with 35,470 recorded incidents, according to an analysis of government data published covering the period from April 2023 to March 2024.
Across England, the scourge of fly-tipping represnted a 6.2 per cent increase on the previous year and the second consecutive annual rise recorded.
Nottingham and Liverpool were also included in the top 10, with other places towards the highest levels being Birmingham and Bradford.
Last year some 60 per cent of cases involved household waste, with 688,000 incidents of illegally dumped rubbish from homes.
These ranged from black bags of waste to the contents of shed clearances, furniture, carpets and DIY.
The most common places for flytipping to occur were on pavements and roads, accounting for 37 per cent of incidents.
Almost one third, or 31 per cent, of incidents were the size of a small van load.
And another 28 per cent amounted to the equivalent of a car boot or less of rubbish.
Meanwhile, four per cent were the size of a tipper lorry load or bigger.
Large flytipping incidents have cost £13.1million for local authorities to clean up, research showed.
Mr Reed has said: 'Flytipping is a disgraceful act which trashes communities and its increase is unacceptable. Communities and businesses shouldn't have to put up with these crimes.
'This Government will crack down on fly tipping and punish rubbish dumpers, forcing them to clean up their mess.'