A man from Woodville has been found guilty of breaching the 'duty of care' for disposing of household waste - and received fines and costs totalling £972.

Numerous bags of domestic waste containing rotting food and soiled nappies were found dumped at Coton Park in March this year.

These were traced by Council Community Safety Enforcement Officers to having come from the property of Mr Sary Ismail of Woodville.

In interview, Mr Ismail admitted to having paid someone he found on social media to get rid of the waste because his bin was already full - and he did not want to put the waste in his own car to take to the refuse amenity site.

He admitted making no checks on the credentials of the person who he paid £30 to get rid of the waste.

Mr Ismail was originally issued with a £400 fixed penalty notice for the duty of care offence by the Councils Community Safety Enforcement Team. He failed to make any attempt to pay the fixed penalty.

Councillor Stephen Taylor, Chair of the Councils' Environment and Development Service Committee said "Everybody has a legal duty to make sure that waste they produce is disposed of properly.

"If somebody makes an offer through social media to dispose of waste, a big part of that duty is to make some checks that they are legal. If an offer looks too good to be true, then that should immediately raise suspicions.

"All waste carriers need to be registered with the Environment Agency. If someone says they are a legal waste carrier it only takes five minutes to do an online check.

"Unless you are certain that they are legitimate, don't use them."

Fly tipping offences increased significantly during 2020/21 and the Council's Community Safety Enforcement Team have been vigorously pursuing offenders.

Since April of this year the average monthly incidents of fly tipping has halved.

Please click HERE to make your online waste carrier check.