Criminal gangs in balaclavas face being caught on camera as Brentwood Borough Council looks to CCTV technology to crack down on fly-tipping.

The council has also agreed to set up a fly-tipping “response team” costing £70,000 annually after a doubling of incidents over the past two years.

From 2012 to 2021 the number of fly-tips over the borough had remained fairly constant, with approximately 600 fly-tips per year. However, in the last two years, the borough has experienced a two-fold increase in the number of fly-tips – from 687 to 1,359.

There were 462 in 2019/20, 585 in 2020/21, 687 in 2021/22, 1,069 in 2022/23 and 1,359 to date in this finance year. Extra funding from Essex Police will be spent on four cameras to target gangs dumping waste largely in Warley and Navestock. Navestock Parish Council has also contributed funds for another four cameras.

Council leader Barry Aspinell said at a full council meeting on December 13: “We understand that there are organised criminal gangs coming from outside the borough, desiccating our beautiful countryside in various locations. The majority of this is in Warley and in Navestock.

“The method of trying to deal with this is to obviously identify where these fly tips are – which we are told by local residents or passing motorists – and then allocate the required vehicle and crew to go and clear.”

MORE BRENTWOOD NEWS

The additional annual £70,000 cost required to fund the recruitment of the two additional staff dedicated to undertake fly-tipping clearance will have to be met by cutting costs from other areas, the council has said.

Best practice suggests that a typical fly-tip should be cleared within two working days. In Brentwood, the average time taken to clear fly tips from April 2023 to October 2023 has been more like 20 days.

The majority of the proposed resource would in all probability be focused within Warley, and Brizes and Doddinghurst, with these two wards representing almost half of recorded fly-tips between April and October this year.

He added: “Obviously cameras will not prevent people from doing it but if we can, with our police colleagues in the Met, trackback where these people are coming from – because they’re doing this with false number plates, balaclavas, the whole bit – then perhaps identify where they’ve come and we can start prosecuting.”

One individual, suspected of fly-tipping, was scheduled for a court appearance for December 8 but did not turn up. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.

He added: “Essex police have further patrols in the area because they consider this a serious enough matter to be more involved in than they were previously and in this way we hope to combat this serious obvious scourge into our borough.”