Middlesbrough Council has issued stark warnings after officers seized another car suspected to be involved in fly-tipping.

Since April 1 there have been 2,818 reported cases of fly-tipping and 362 abandoned vehicles out of a total of 3,974 environmental service requests.

Geoff Field, head of the council’s environment services, warned that the local authority was willing to prosecute fly-tippers.

He said: “We are looking towards a number of strategies that we will be continuing to introduce going forward, including more CCTV, to try and reduce significantly going forward the level of fly-tipping in Middlesbrough.

“We are hoping that Middlesbrough becomes an area that people understand if they fly-tip that we will deal with it in the most serious of manners and we are not afraid and certainly will avail ourselves to the full use of the courts system if required.”

Read more: Zero prosecutions despite Darlington fly-tipping increasing

As part of the council’s new approach, it has seized another vehicle, a black Ford Galaxy, on Eversham Road in Grangetown.

The man, who lives in Redcar and Cleveland, has been accused of fly-tipping in neighbouring areas including one incident at the side of someone’s home in east Middlesbrough.This is the second vehicle the council has seized that has had suspected involvement in flytipping.

The first, a Peugeot Partner van, was crushed after the owner was accused of dumping bricks, rubble and carpets at the former Southlands Centre site on Ormesby Road in July.

The council’s operational community service manager Dale Metcalfe said: “This is something that we are going to be looking to do more often and increase.

“So when we identify a vehicle that is involved in environmental offences, we will be doing everything we can to take that vehicle off the road to prevent further offences and we will destroy that vehicle as well if the notice is not responded to and if we get the outcome from court under forfeiture.”

Mr Field said that his team have been more proactive in getting people to tell them about fly-tipping in their area.

This meant that there was a spike in reports over the summer, but that has since decreased.

Mr Metcalfe also said that there had been anecdotal evidence that areas across the town are starting to look tidier.

Currently, the council has different options to collect bulky waste – it’s free if you’re willing to wait up to 12 weeks or you can pay £20 for a premium service which will collect within three weeks.

Between April 2021 and October 2021, the council collected 2,571 non-electrical items that were booked for pick-up and 1,663 electrical items.

Since February 1 2021, the council has collected 3,300 mattresses from people’s homes and the cost since the start of the year of this service is around £50,000.

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