COMMUNITY skips could be introduced to Southampton in a bid to reduce the amount of fly-tipping.

The city council says it had to spend £400,000 a year on tackling fly-tipping.

Last month it said the high number of fly-tipping reports – the highest by far for any Hampshire authority - was due to accurate reporting.

Members of the scrutiny overview and management committee (SOMC) met Councillor Toqeer Kataria, the cabinet member for communities to discuss the new household waste and fly-tipping policy.

It will run until 2026 and is the first time fly-tipping has featured as a staple part of the strategy.

The strategy states that the council will try to clear fly-tipping on council land within five days of receiving a report – and issue fines of up to £50,000 for people who do not respond to notices.

In February (2023) it was revealed that between 2021 and 2022, Southampton had 9,999 incidents of fly tipping. This was almost five-times the second highest figure for an authority in Hampshire.

The figure was released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and in response the council said: “We are confident that our monitoring and reporting is accurate in relation to fly-tipping incidents and that the service is classifying all instances of fly-tipping correctly, when compared to some of the figures posted by similar local authorities.”

Cllr Kataria has revealed the amount spent clearing rubbish.

He said: “Southampton fly-tipping is a very big issue. [A] large amount of taxpayers’ money is spent. Just over £400,000 a year is spent on clearing fly-tipping, which is a huge number.”

The cabinet member went on to talk about the possibility of offering ‘community skips’ to help tackle the problem.

 “Community skips is something we are also looking into but it is something we need to see what other authorities are doing.

 “We know that Gosport is already trialling community skips, so we are waiting for their trial to end so that we can learn from that and then maybe adopt it here or think of better ways.”

Also in attendance at Thursday’s (9th March) meeting was Ian Collins, director for environment.

Mr Collins took the opportunity to list the enforcement action the council has been taking over the last year.

He said: “We do have an active fly-tipping enforcement team. We have strong fly-tipping prosecution powers and we do use them.”

Last year, the council conducted 244 fly-tipping investigations.

Out of these, it issued:

  • 192 instructions for the landowner to clear
  • Over 100 verbal warnings
  • 225 written warnings
  • 172 community resolutions

Mr Collins, speaking to the SOMC members, said: “We took core proceedings for eight which you would have seen press coverage of. (These are) relatively rare, but for the (worst) offences.

 The council also issued 45 fixed penalty notices in the last six months.

 The environment director finished by saying: “We need to target the areas where we don’t have an infinite enforcement resource.

“We need to target the areas where the problem is at its worst. We need to make sure it has an impact.”

The new strategy is due to go before the cabinet on Tuesday.