"Your waste is your responsibility."
That is the message after a Plymouth woman was forced to cough up £728 for paying a neighbour to dispose of household waste that ended up dumped over her own back fence.
Sarah Williams, 33, now of Heron Close, Millbrook, appeared before Plymouth Magistrates Court on Tuesday to plead guilty to a charge under Section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which imposes a duty of care on persons concerned with handling waste.
The court heard how following a tip off from a member of the public in October 2019, local online news outlet Plymouth Live ran a story with pictures of rubbish on a strip of land that runs between Gdynia Way and the back fences of Maidstone Avenue, where Williams was living at the time.
The Council then began investigations and having inspected the site and consulted witnesses, officers discovered that there were two deposits of rubbish locate behind the fence of two different properties.
One witness positively identified one of Williams neighbours as dumping one of the piles. They were given a Fixed Penalty Notice for £400 which was paid in full.
Williams was also given a fixed penalty notice for the rubbish located behind her fence, but despite several reminders and attempts to contact her, it remained unpaid and a summons to court was issued. Following two no shows, she was arrested on Friday morning and brought before the court.
In her defence, Williams said she had paid a neighbour £100 to dispose of her rubbish but did not realise that the friend had thrown the rubbish over the fence until the Council contacted her. She alleged that when she challenged the neighbour, she was assaulted. Williams accepted that she buried her head in the sand but did, in time, remove the rubbish.
She was given a £480 fine and ordered to pay £200 costs and a £48 victim surcharge. She will also have criminal record.
Councillor Sally Haydon, Cabinet member for Customer Focus and Community Safety, said: "Fly-tipping is not tolerated in Plymouth.
"This lady's tale should be a lesson to all - you must look after your waste; you must know where it's going; you must use licensed waste carriers. The responsibility is on you.
"If you don’t take it seriously, if you do it on the cheap and it turns up somewhere like this, then in the eyes of the law, you are as guilty as the person who actually dumped it."
If you want to pay a private company to remove waste from your property, then you must ensure that they are a licensed waste carrier and can give you a waste transfer certificate.
A full list of licensed companies is available here: www.plymouth.gov.uk/binsrecyclingandwaste/gettingridlargewasteitems