Fife Council admit illegal dumping seems to be increasing

Fife Council are considering the measure which would be used to identify and prosecute illegal dumpers.

The issue was raised at the Cowdenbeath area committee during a report on the domestic waste and street cleaning service.

Councillor Mary Lockhart said: "The back road between Lochgelly and Cardenden has a layby and several other bits that are regularly absolutely packed with fly-tipping.

"Your guys collect that and take it away quite regularly but it is my impression that the amount of that fly-tipping has increased.

"And a lot of it seems to be industrial, it seems to be from companies.

"It's not three-piece suites, it's not the sort of stuff you're having to remove from pavement uplifts, it's builders' rubbish, it's baths, it's tanks of some kind, I just wonder if that is on the increase?"

Service manager Sandy Anderson conceded: "It does seem to be on the increase.

"With the cost of living going up and up and up it may be that some commercial businesses are not willing to pay the fees to dump it responsibly, because the fees are going up as well.

"I can't make assumptions but we do see a lot of it in our laybys and we try and respond as quick as we can to get it removed.

"It's not always easy to identify who has left it. It's often rubble or baths, they don't have names and addresses stuck to them unfortunately.

"We're looking at various schemes to deal with this, including litter cams.

"There are things we can do and action we can take but it all takes time."

Litter cameras have been used to detect and record motorists throwing rubbish from vehicles.

By capturing the licence plates on the vehicle, they can then find the owner and issue a penalty charge.

The council have suggested it could also work for fly-tippers.

Mr Anderson said he has six workers whose only job is to pick up and remove illegally dumped rubbish.

He added: "For fly-tipping I have one crew in each area, west, central and east, and that's their full-time role. They just continue to lift fly-tipping.

"That's a driver plus someone working with them."

Fly-tipping has continued to be a problem in the Kingdom, despite the increasing demand for the free bulky uplift service.

It had been hoped that the latter would lead to a big drop in illegal dumping but that hasn't been the case.

Introduced in April 2023, there were more than 58,000 collections in 2024-25.

Prior to the service being free of charge, the average was around 14,000 a year.

In 2024-25 in the Cowdenbeath area there was 8,631 uplifts.

Cllr Linda Erskine said: "In terms of the bulky uplift service, are we still getting people putting a lot of black bags out?

"That's something that has caused concern for councillors as it was never designed for people to put black bags out for you to collect."

Mr Anderson replied: "We're still collecting black bags but the maximum anyone can put out is two black bags instead of six.

"That was only just done so we'll see what sort of difference that makes.

"I agree, it was never intended for that.

"Bulky items to me are too big to go in your car to take to a recycling centre - couches and big fridge freezers, that's what the service should be for."