Dumping dog waste in Hornchurch lands scrap man in a mess

Dumping a large amount of, er, dump, has earned a scrap metal dealer a £670 court bill for fly-tipping.

Jason Sabine, of Wickford, picked up a large steel drum while working in the borough on June 18 last year – before discovering it was full of dog excrement and leaving it near Upper Rainham Road in Hornchurch.

Little did the 53-year-old know that the area was covered by CCTV belonging to a resident who was sick of his local area being used for fly-tipping.

When he saw the barrel the next morning, he swiftly downloaded the footage from the CCTV, which clearly showed Sabine driving down in his white transit van and doing the deed.

Havering Council enforcement officers collected the footage and tracked Sabine through his vehicle details.

Appearing at Barkingside Magistrates’ Court on January 9, Sabine pleaded guilty to fly-tipping and was fined £200, ordered to pay £438 costs and a £20 victim surcharge, a £668 total.

Cllr Robert Benham, cabinet member for environment, said: “There’s no excuse for fly-tipping. There are plenty of places that will take waste legally, so to just leave it somewhere and expect the taxpayer to foot the bill of clearing it, which quite frankly isn’t cheap, is unacceptable. So we’ll do everything we can to bring offenders to justice, and I ask residents to report any information they have about fly-tippers.”

Fly-tipping carries a maximum penalty of £50,000 and/or 12 months imprisonment when the case is heard in the magistrates’ court, or a five-year prison sentence and unlimited fine if the case goes to crown court.

Anyone with information about fly-tipping is asked to come forward by reporting it online at havering.gov.uk/reportit.

The Council is clamping down on fly-tippers and dog mess offenders as part of its Cleaner Havering campaign, with a number of recent prosecutions for the offence.