A man was caught on camera dumping a bag of rubbish on a Buckinghamshire roadside after claiming that his bin was ‘full’ – and has been charged £1,000 for his trouble.
The man, who lives in Slough, was spotted on Buckinghamshire Council roadside cameras dropping the waste onto a roadside on the A412 Uxbridge Road in Wexham on August 25, before getting back into his car and driving away.
After being identified by council officials, he was handed a fixed penalty notice of £1,000.
He then apologised for the fly-tipping offence, claiming that his own bin was too full and that he had intended to come back for the roadside rubbish.
The Berkshire native retained his anonymity and dodged court action by paying the penalty in full and cleaned up both his and other people’s waste at the spot.
Investigators heard that he found the rubbish, which could have been recycled for free at a number of local centres, blocking his drive and that he dropped it off on the A412, “intending to go back and remove it”.
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However, he failed to do so before an investigation was launched into the incident and was still handed the maximum fine for the offence.
The council raised its threshold for fining fly-tippers from £400 to £1,000 last year and has already delivered the hefty penalty to a handful of waste-dumpers – money that goes into the coffers for the local authority’s clean-up bills.
Leader Martin Tett has also pledged to take a hard line against offenders on several occasions, accusing magistrates of being too soft on fly-tipping at an AGM in May where he said there was “absolutely no excuse” for illegally dumping rubbish in the county.
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