A REPORT to a council scrutiny committee has revealed what we already knew six years ago – Thornton Heath has the worst flytipping in the borough. 

The administration’s Don’t Mess with Croydon campaign seems to have made little dent in the war on flytipping, according to the report to the Streets Environment and Homes Scrutiny Sub-Committee. 

Thornton Heath had the highest number of ‘removed’ flytips in 2020 at 3,029, followed in fourth by West Thornton with 2,383 and sixth in the league table Bensham Manor with 1,683. 

A heat map of the most recorded flytips, which are predominantly in north Croydon, states the cause is because it is more ‘densely populated’ than the south and does tend to have more ‘street cleaning issues’. 

Grange Road, Parchmore Road and Cotford Road are all identified as being some of the worst streets for tipping in the whole of Croydon. 

Another graph shows that the ‘overwhelming’ number of flyytips contain household rubbish dumped by residents and not builders or trade waste. 

Fixed Penalty Notices for littering and flytipping have also reduced significantly due to the reduction in staffing over the past year with just 244 FPNs issued this year compared with 927 for the whole of 2018. 

The South London Waste Partnership (SLWP)  was formed in 2003 between the boroughs of Croydon, Kingston, Merton, and Sutton. The contract was awarded to waste provider Veolia and renewed in 2018. 

One graph  shows the number of flytips in Croydon is over three times the number in neighbouring Kingston and Sutton and more than half that of Merton. 

The report reveals that Veolia is planning a flats above shops project scheduled to start next year, which will also diferentiate between true flytips and residents, who live in these properties but have no containers to dispose of waste except on the streets. 

The report goes on to state that changes to the management and focus of the service by the council set out in an improvement plan in April was “showing real promise at being able to deliver improvements in the service”. 

However, it adds: “The driver shortage has hindered this, while the ability to attract and maintain HGV drivers remain the improvements are on hold. Veolia are currently able to complete all collections by the end of the week but not all are to schedule with delays to services.”