FLYTIPPERS face a £50 on-the-spot fine for dumping rubbish outside Holbeach Community Centre, South Holland District Council has warned.
Tough action is being taken to avoid a repeat of the chaotic scenes outside the centre when more than four tonnes of rubbish was left outside the centre for three days.
The problem arose during the council’s monthly waste collection when a tailback of cars on roads around the centre occurred as drivers waited to drop rubbish off for collection.
Volunteers at the community centre said the situation was out of control as a pile of uncollected rubbish was left behind after the cut-off time of 11am, leading residents to add their household and garden waste to the pile.
Holbeach district councillor Francis Biggadike said: “For several years, Holbeach has had a monthly refuse collection on Saturdays because the town is more than seven miles from the main waste depot in Spalding.
“It’s always gone reasonable well but last time, for reasons we’re not quite sure of, we were absolutely swamped and we had a lot more people turning up with their waste than we could cope with.
“We couldn’t say to them ‘you have to take it away,’ so to accommodate everybody, we asked them to leave their waste on the car park to be collected on Monday or Tuesday.
“In the meantime, people saw the pile and continued to bring rubbish so we ended up with about four tonnes to clear on Tuesday morning.”
Notices will be put up outside the community centre ahead of the next waste collection on August 11 warning residents that anyone caught dumping rubbish outside the community centre at any time other than between 8am and 11am will be treated as a flytipper and fined.
A district council spokesman said: “Councillors have campaigned hard to maintain supplementary waste collection services throughout the district, including a monthly facility outside Holbeach Community Centre.
“Residents wanting to make use of this service are reminded that refuse can only be deposited during the operating hours of 8am until 11am on the Saturday in question.
“Anything deposited outside these hours will be deemed as flytipping.
“Fixed penalty tickets may be issued to anyone caught flytipping which carries a fine of £50.
“Alternatively, if matters are taken to a magistrates’ court successfully prosecuted cases carry a fine of up to £20,000.”
The move has been welcomed by the community centre whose spokesman said: “This is one of the better ideas the district council has come up with and it will certainly help prevent the problem from happening again.”