Episode 11 Filthy Rotten Scoundrels

A computer. A computer. It's unacceptable behaviour to do this

sort of thing. There's no need for it. There are local tips available.

Just take it down the tip. We're on the front line of the clear-up and

the fight back with the dedicated teams tracking down the rogues and

putting the 'Great' back into Britain. It may harm your defence

if you fail to mention when questioned something which you

later rely on in court. Today, searching for clues in a fly-tip,

an amateur sleuth provides the damning evidence. This was actually

in there? It was, yes. You found this in the tip? That's brilliant.

As a tax payer I'm quite appalled. We spend a lot of money on our

refuse collection. I don't feel we should foot the bill for these fly-

tippers. I think it's a disgrace. And the intricate detective work

that brought to book the man with a van who couldn't be bothered to do

the recycling. We've got the same table, the same covering, the same

breeze blocks and, to tie everything together, we have the

address of the premises all this came from on this box here.

that, and Britain's worst fly- tipper. Welcome to the dirty world

Now, although my body is a temple, I have to confess to occasionally

joining the congregation who worship at the alter of the Sunday

morning fry-up. Tasty! But have you ever thought about what happens to

all the waste oil you casually tip In London, Thames Water are

fighting a constant battle to keep the sewers flowing against the

growing tide of waste oil that accumulates, hardens and causes

expensive blockages. But what they've cleared so far is just the

tip of the fat-berg. Blockages are a great cost to Thames as a company,

and to all water companies. But, more importantly, it's not the

financial cost, it's the cost of the inconvenience to customers

where people have disposed of stuff into the sewer system that they

shouldn't dispose of in the first place. And they cost millions.

We're talking about millions and millions of pounds a year to

unblock. So, basically, it's our own fault and it's our own sewers

we're blocking up, and not just with fat. All the things we

shouldn't be flushing down the loo, from cotton wool to condoms just

make it worse. The silly thing is, it's all completely avoidable.

taken out and it goes to landfill. Why not short-circuit that and put

it straight into the bin, where it would just go directly to landfill

and not possibly cause people problems with sewer blockages and

sewer floodings. Right, own up, do you pour your oil down the sink?

Usually when I'm chucking away cooking oil we let it dry first and

then chuck it in the bin. Good man. Swot, some might say. OK, next.

I've done any cooking with chickens or meats or anything, the oil and

the waste and the fat I generally pour it into a carton, like a

carton of juice or something that we've finished off. And then when

it's all solidified I just sling it in the bin. Another shining example.

Is anyone going to own up to it? I'm frying and I use kitchen roll,

I wipe the pan and put that in the refuse bins that go with the other

recycling stuff, and then I wash it in the sink, but hopefully there's

no fat left in the utensils. Oooh! Very fair, sir. If it goes down the

sink it just goes hard down in the pipes and it just blocks everything

up. With all the other that goes rubbish that goes down the sink as

well, it just goes all scummy and blocks things up, which it has done

in our street. And that's exactly the problem. We might think the

main culprits are restaurants and cafes, but, in fact, most blockages

are found in the small pipes around people's homes. So, waders on and

Today, the Thames Water team have the unenviable task of going down

into the sewers underneath London's Westminster to chip away at the

fetid fat which has accumulated there. You're doing a tough job,

We're going to go down and remove the fat that's on the sides of the

sewer there. We're going to get some of that off to aid the flow,

push it through faster. This is serious work, people. Just look at

the conditions. It's hot down there, about 30 degrees, would you

believe? And I think we can all guess what it smells like. These

men are to be applauded. As you can see here, but fat is actually

completely solid. I mean, this has all been flushed, this liquid fat

and sanitary items. But it's actually solid and to cut through

it, it's like clay almost. The same consistency as clay has got, really.

A dry clay. So, it takes us a lot of effort to remove it from the

walls. You're telling me. It's not a quick wipe with a bit of kitchen

towel now, is it? If we leave this fat without actually cleaning it

off, you can see how it's starting to build up, so what would happen

is we'd end up with a complete blockage. I mean, look, this is a

small lump, you know? It's only a small section on the top, but you

can see there how big that is. Shame on you, fat flushers. The fat

that we've got here has come from a variety of places. I mean, we're in

the heart of the West End here, so there are lots of restaurants, also

domestic premises, as well. Commercial premises aren't the only

offenders. You can tell that from finding condoms and sanitary items.

I don't know about you, but after watching this I'll never throw

anything except water down my sink again. Thames Water alone deals

with 55,000 blockages a year at a cost of an eye watering �12 million,

and that's just for one year! You're already paying your Council

Tax, and yet you're paying us to dispose of your rubbish as well,

whereas this could just go straight into your bin, into landfill, which

is where it's supposed to go. point well made, and here's Danny's

audition to present Blue Peter. What people should be doing with

their fat is waiting for it to cool and congeal and then you can scoop

it out of the pan with kitchen roll, or you can even mix birdseed with

it and make fat balls out of it for the birds during the winter.

one you made earlier? After half an hour chipping away at Westminster's

impressive underground fat-berg, Danny's got plenty to feed the

birds with. Maybe it's all those dinners the MPs have been scoffing.

As you saw, we removed quite a large lump of fat from the sewer. I

mean, it only looked like a small bit above the surface, but when we

broke it up underneath it weighed a good 150 kilos. So, I mean, that's

a large bit of fat. If that had have come through on its own, it

could have quite easily blocked the cipher and then we'd have had

potentially a bit of a flooding issue on our hand, so we've been in

and we've cleaned it now and safe in the knowledge that it will run

fine for another couple of months without causing too many problems

through the network. Well done, chaps. Now, go and have a shower,

you've done us proud. Join us later to find out how a bus company has

come up with a clever way of using leftover oil to steer their vessels

A brilliant detective story now. Are you sitting comfortably? Then

I'll begin. It looks kosher enough, doesn't it? A man chucking out his

waste at a recycling centre in North Shields, acting like a

responsible citizen. But that's all he was doing, acting, because

instead of properly recycling everything in his van, half of it

landed up being dumped at the side Filthy, stinking trash strewn

everywhere. Disgusting. But, our rotten scoundrel wasn't going to

get away with it that easily, not if North Tyneside Council's

environment officers had anything to do with it. Wayne Young is in

charge of the team that pieced together a fascinating string of

clues to track down the man responsible, and this is how it all

happened. What he decided to do is travel down to this site next to an

industrial estate and dump the remainder of the waste. He was

actually witnessed by a local security guard pulling up onto the

site, tipping off his waste and driving away from the site. And

that was dumped just over here. security guard reported what he had

seen. The investigation had begun. Wayne's team arrived to pick apart

the festering haul looking for clues. What a job. But the mucky

work paid off. The investigators went through and found some

addresses that linked the waste to an address in Newcastle. And bingo!

Mistake number one from the fly- tipper. Wayne's officers drove over

to Newcastle and knocked on the door of the address they had found.

No one was at home, but there was another clue staring them in the

face, a 'To Let' sign outside the house. Next stop, the letting

agents. The letting agent explained that they had employed a person of

JH Environmental Services to take away the waste. Environmental

services! That's some cheek! The letting agency thought they were

employing someone who's do the job to the letter of the law, but

there's nothing environmental about dumping rubbish at the side of the

road. But with a name and number, it was another lucky break for

Wayne's team and the net was closing in on the filthy rotten

fly-tipper. It turns out that the business was owned by 24 year old

Jamie Harker, who charged �70 in cash to take away the rubbish. And

this is when he made mistake number two. He went to a household waste

recycling centre, which is meant just for local residents to use to

dispose of their waste, and he signed a disclaimer to say he was a

local resident and he wasn't being paid for disposal of the waste.

mistake. In fact, massive, because every week Wayne's tireless team of

enforcers do the rounds of recycling centers and check out all

those disclaimers. They were already on to Harker through the

letting agency, so when his name came up again alarm bells started

ringing. A quick check of the CCTV soon picked out the scoundrel and

eagle-eyed Wayne suddenly saw his whole case fall into place. As you

can see here, this person has on the breeze blocks, a wooden table

top and a black covering. It's a really hot day and later on you see

he gives up. We'll see him there actually going out and leaving the

site. Awww, didums! Was it too much like hard work having to sort out

everything to put it into the proper skips? Having to actually

recycle the waste you'd been paid to dispose of properly? Well,

obviously it was. Just look at how much stuff is left in the back of

his van. Harker thought it was quicker and easier to just fly-tip

Look familiar? We've got the same table, the same covering, the same

breeze blocks and, to tie everything together, we have the

address of the premises all this came from on this box here.

it's like watching Poirot on the Orient Express! Wayne had his man

and Harker was bang to rights. In March 2011, he was found guilty of

two fly-tipping offences and ordered to pay �100 costs to the

council and handed a 12 month conditional discharge, meaning if

he did this again in the next year But for Wayne, Harker's conviction

meant a lot more than being found guilty of his crimes. Following the

convictions, this story was actually featured in a local

newspaper which outlines what this person did. There's the waste there

he dumped. This sends out a clear message to other people who may be

wanting to fly-tip that if you do fly-tip within this area, we'll

investigate and we will prosecute. Hear, hear, Wayne! And good

Keeping our streets clean is a mammoth job at the best of times,

but there are some filthy rotten scoundrels who seem intent on

making it even tougher, as Before you get to the railway

embankment there are the backs of houses and people tend to go behind

there and drop sacks of rubbish, sofas, and then set fire to them.

Look! I mean, look! That's because people don't want to pay to put

tyres in the dumps, so it's easy to throw them down there. That's a

really, really wrong attitude. I don't think there's any need for it.

I think it's just laziness, to be honest. I think they should be

fined instantly. Fine them heavily. They won't do it again. Not only

fine them, send them out clearing up litter. If they continue? In

prison. Pretty clear, eh? People are fed up with rubbish louts.

Doncaster Council spent �3.5 million last year clearing up our

mess. Now, that's not for ordinary rubbish collection. That's for dog

fouling, fly-tipping, dropped fag ends, discarded gum and thousands

of black bags of rubbish that never made it to the bin. That's day to

day work for Doncaster grime fighters. But environmental

investigator Bob Allen was recently confronted with something

A job they got right up his nose. In the 10 years I've been doing

this job, this is possibly the worst one I've ever seen just

because of the nature of what it was. When I got a call for this one,

it was sent through to me with the photograph. When I got out there, I

couldn't believe what I was seeing. And what he was seeing was animal

carcasses just dumped on a remote road. It was a nice warm day. The

smell was just starting to come out, but the first thing I saw was the

pig's head. This is unbelievable. It was clear this wasn't your

average dump. I'm looking at that thing smiling at me. It was

surrounded by blood, broken eggs, empty milk cartons, pigs' feet,

pigs' ears. It was tripe. It was the side of the carcass where the

fat's all cut off. Past its sell-by date bacon where, because it was

warm, the packets had swollen. Some of the meat that was in there, I

presume it was intestines, offal and things like that, that had gone

almost grey and putrefied. There was a hell of a mixture of smells.

Stop, Bob! I'm feeling a bit off colour myself now. But where on

Earth had this awful smelling offal come from? Bob had the unenviable

job of searching this lot for clues. I was there for an hour or so

searching through it. There were labels in there from main brand

supermarkets, so I thought that it can't be a fly-tip case, there's a

bit more to this one. So, I pulled a lot of the evidence out and went

to certain shops. They told us quite openly, yeah, we have this

guy comes round, collects our end of product meat. End of product

meat? It's got a horrible kind of ring to it. Bob contacted the

company who were doing the pick ups and they said one of their vehicles,

still full of rotting carcasses, had been stolen and still hadn't

been traced. Some unwitting van thief had got more than they

bargained for when they made off with this load. No wonder they

wanted rid of it. Disgraceful that they dumped it. You know, where

they'd dumped it was right near to a water filled ditch, so a lot of

that stuff could contaminate the water. It was across an access road

to a water treatment plant. I just don't think that these guys could

care less. The filthy scoundrels must have got a well deserved shock

when they opened the back of the truck. The clean-up job was

certainly shockingly expensive. total, it was just under nine

tonnes of waste meat there. We didn't just clear it, we cleaned it

off, as well. We had to jet it all down. The whole job cost us nearly

�5,000. Five grand of public money to clean up after a van thief!

Disgusting. And the filthy scoundrel was never caught.

didn't get any conviction. We didn't get any evidence as to say

who had done it. I'm quite grateful that these sort of jobs are the

extreme and it's the only one I've had to deal with because it's a lot

of money just to spend on one job. Well, for your sake, Bob, we all

hope it's a one-off. This random dump of animal carcasses became the

council's responsibility because the tip was found on public land.

However, fellow grime fighter Rob was called in to help in a case

where fly-tipping was costing a private company so much money they

started to do their own surveillance. This fly-tip is on

private land and it's something that the council won't clear up, so

it brooks the business to remove it. And what he's done is he's put some

cameras in. This camera system has cost over �1,200 to implement, so

that's a big cost to a business that's been here for over 30 years.

And it wasn't long before Big Brother captured some villains

brazenly dumping a load of household waste. Somebody clearly

didn't like their bedroom furniture very much. Frustratingly, the

camera didn't pick up a registration number, but luck and

the brass neck cheek of the same fly-tippers was on the company's

side. A few days later, the vehicle actually came back to this

particular area. They've come round the back of the property looking

for an area to dump. They found a perfect area, which is out of the

way. One of them actually looks around the area to check out if

They think there are no cameras there. They've dumped it, and then

And there it is, a completely clear registration number. Result! And

the pictures confirm it's the same vehicle as the first dump because

both show an identically dented van. You've been framed, guys, and for

what? You could be facing a hefty fine just for dumping a small, dead

conifer. It was good news for the company, though, because they had

enough evidence to pass to the council for investigation. Rob

found the address where the white van was registered and immediately

sets out to interview the owner. Without this CCTV evidence, or

without any evidence at all, for flight tips we're unable to

investigate it, unless we've got a witness. And so, yes, it's a really

important part. I really enjoy this He's at the house on the van's

registration document. But there's no one in it. The next step is to

How are you doing? Are you all right? I'm from Doncaster Council.

Has he got a white van, do you know? A white Citroen van? No.

You've not seen that in the back? Cheers for your help. I'm just

going to go round the back to see whether there's anything there.

Excuse me, sir, sorry to bother you. I'm from Doncaster Council. This

property here, have you ever seen a white Citroen van outside here

before? I've never seen it. you've not seen this van? All right,

then. Not to worry. Thanks for your time, anyway. Cheers. It appears

that the neighbours say they've never seen a white Citroen Replay

van outside this guy's property, so it looks as if he's sold this van

on. So, if we could find out where he's sold it on to, that's the next

step in the investigation. whoever lives here is completely

innocent. It's the new owner of the van that Rob wants to speak to now.

Rob leaves a note at the address asking him to get in touch. A

frustrating beginning, but Rob is still working on the case in the

We're off to the coast now and the picturesque Fairlight Downs in East

Sussex, near where the Battle of Hastings was fought. But amongst

these rolling downs, a modern-day battle is being waged against a

dirty rotten fly-tipper who's left a huge mound of rubbish in a

bridleway at the bottom of a hill. Environmental Enforcement Officer

and pivotal filth fighter for Rother Council Mike Hutton has come

What exactly lurks in this lot? lot of builders' rubble, a lot of

Even an old microwave in here. It looks like a lot of domestic

rubbish, as well. Well, we've got the lot here. I think that counts

as a full house. Totally blocking It's such a shame finding a fly-tip

in this area because it's obviously an area of outstanding natural

beauty. We're right on the edge of Hastings Country Park here and

adjoining National Trust property. Criminal dumping in an area of

outstanding natural beauty breaks my heart. And local residents are

rightly up in arms. When I first saw the fly-tipping here it made me

very angry, and also very sad. I have seen at times even glowworms

down there, so it's a very precious and a rather special site. It's

spoiled what is a very beautiful amenity for this part of Sussex.

Quite right. Maggie Sullivan was so wild she decided to do some

detective work of her own and found a vital clue in the rubbish. This

was actually in there. It was, yes. You found this in the tip? That's

brilliant. It's a replacement note. It actually has got a name and

address on it, which is all brilliant stuff. As a tax payer,

I'm quite appalled. We spend a lot of money on our refuse collection.

I don't feel we should foot the bill for these fly-tippers. I think

it's a disgrace. That's great. Thanks ever so much. Thank you. Bye.

I'm not surprised she's upset, considering Rother Council does

foot the bill for this ugly crime, to the tune of the �80,000 last

year. Maggie's evidence could lead Mike to the owner of the rubbish.

He's determined to collar someone for this and he wants more clues.

It's actually a delivery note with a name and address on here, which

is quite useful, which we can add to our evidence. So, more evidence,

which is a result. This was clearly someone who wasn't worried about

being found out. Did they misguidedly think their rubbish was

being legitimately disposed of? Right, I mean, although we've got

the same name and address cropping up time and time again on here,

this may not be the person who's actually done the fly-tipping. They

may well have paid somebody to do this for them. Obviously, we won't

know this until we ask these people in for interview. We'll obviously

ask them how this stuff ended up here with their name and address in

it. Mike's got great evidence to follow up on, but first the

rubble's got to be removed, and that doesn't come cheap. A fly-tip

of this size, I imagine is going to cost in the region of �250 to �300

to get cleared. What a waste. should be cleared tomorrow,

hopefully. You catch the person. Well, let's hope so. I think Mike

fully intends to. Over the next few days, Mike tracked down the person

who appeared on all the paperwork. So, what we went and did was we

paid the guy a visit, told them we've found this evidence in this

fly-tip and the guy was horrified, because he'd actually paid somebody

�130 to take all this stuff away for him. 130 quid the cheating

dumper just pocketed. Luckily, he remembered the name of the guy. I

think he got the registration of his van and we got the details of

this guy. Mike's investigation was continuing and then he heard about

another similar dump. A fly-tip was reported just a few miles from the

other one. The dump's now been cleared, but it was quite a sight.

Right, this is the scene of the fly-tip in Rock Lane. When we came

down here rubbish was strewn probably a good 100 yards all along

this lane. It looks like there was a bed dumped here with a load of

bed linen. There was a load of broken up furniture. It looks like

a lot of clothing, general domestic stuff. That looks like an old tent

or something like that. Just all the sort of stuff you'd associate

with a general house clearance. I don't believe it's quite the

destination the owners of the rubbish had in mind. He just opened

up the back of the truck, it's a tipper truck, tipped it as he was

driving. He didn't even bother to stop, just tipped it all along the

side of the road and this is why it was strewn over such a long area.

Unbelievable! How low can you sink? The dumper seemed to be on a

mission to deface some of the prettiest countryside. It's so

picturesque around here and when you see rubbish and old towels and

sheets and old books and things just laying in the road, it's awful.

Again, there were plenty of documents to lead Mike to the owner

We had a look amongst all this sort of stuff and we found quite a lot

of correspondence, names and addresses, envelopes with names and

addresses on, which are all linked to one person. That owner gave him

details for a man who's offered to dispose of his rubbish for a tidy

fee. Another case were an unsuspecting home owner thought

their rubbish has been properly The reason these people dump their

rubbish is they get paid cash. If they're going to take it to the

amenity tip, they actually get charged to dump this stuff, so what

they do is just dump it anywhere they can so it's not costing them

anything. So, they can just take the cash, dump the rubbish and

they've made themselves some money. Mike brought the suspect in for

questioning and charged him with fly-tipping and not having a waste

carrier's licence, offences which carry a maximum penalty of �20,000.

However, if the owners of the rubbish hadn't been able to provide

Mike with information, they would have been liable for the offence,

so if you find yourself in the same situation, use your loaf and ask to

see a waste carrier's licence. The last word should go to the local

residents, determined to protect their beautiful part of the country.

I don't know why they can't take it down the tip like we do.

countryside is not a dumping ground. It should be taken care of and

those that live here value it, and it's wrong. I think that they

should be locked up in the stocks in our village and the local people

would be able to throw rotten apples at them, basically. And I'll

be first in the queue with that apple.

Back now to the slippery issue of the problems we cause if we pour

are old cooking fat down the sink. Now, I'm sure the images of those

poor guys down the sewer chipping congealed fat off the walls made

quite an impression. The lesson is, throw it in the bin or make a nice

cake for the birds. But, down on the Sussex coast, a busy bus

company has come up with an even more ingenious way of putting all

that fat to good use. We're based in Brighton. We run 11 buses. We

run on 100% recycled bio-diesel made from waste cooking oil which

is all sourced from restaurants, cafes, bars, hotels etc. Brilliant!

So, this Yellow Bus Company is totally green. The restaurants who

supply us with their waste cooking oil are being quite generous. They

could be giving their oil to other people who might give them nominal

amounts of money for it, which we don't do. We give them advertising

to our students on the buses. It all sounds like a well oiled

And Marcus Fort is the man who goes out every day to collect the used

cooking oil for the company. first job of the day is to hit a

very nice Thai restaurant. They've changed their fryers and have asked

for us to come round. Marcus has regular clients he visits in cafes,

bars and restaurants all around the You can see how nice that oil is.

It's clear, it's got no water in it, it's got no bits of food in it. You

could just strain that once and put it straight in your tank.

everyone's oil is liquid gold, though. Some containers have quite

a high content of both water, which has to be got rid of, food waste,

which clogs up the machinery and can't be used for being made into

bio-diesel. And what we call whites, which is fat. Say if you're cooking

a lot of duck, you'll get a lot of the animal fat going into the oil,

and that manifests itself as a layer of white which sits between

the water at the bottom and the oil on the top. And that white fat

All right, so they're both full, that's 20 litres in each. That's 40

litres. Sweet. Thank you so much for the coffees. Have a nice time.

I'll see you probably in a week or two if the weather continues like

this, yeah? Wham, bam! 40 litres smooth and by the numbers. Before

people became concerned with going green, waste oil could be collected

from restaurants by pig farmers who would mix it with feed and give it

to their droves, but that became outlawed when the Government

decided that animals couldn't be fed with other animal products. Now,

because of that and the dangers of putting oil down the sink,

restaurants have to give their waste oil to a licensed carrier,

and this scheme makes business as well as environmental sense. It's

very important to people at restaurants in Brighton that all

the waste oil is recycled. It's not only recycled, but it's used to run

the buses. They're picking up 60, 80, 100 litres every week, which is

a lot of oil to get rid of, and for it to be re-used for something good

in Brighton is fantastic. As well as collecting waste oil, this

clever Brighton bunch also deliver fresh supplies for restaurants to

cook with which, in turn, comes back to the company to be converted

into green fuel for the yellow buses. A slick operation. Did you

see what I did there? This is the empty container which I take back,

and then I circulate his oil and I Cheers, then. See next week. Good

luck! Good! And done for the day collecting. Now we'll take it all

to Mill Farm to get it transferred, and they'll make it into bio-diesel.

But before Marcus can get on to converting the oil into bio-fuel,

there's one more process to go through. He has to filter the used

oil to get rid of any unnecessary nasties, using a traffic cone, of

course! I mean, what else? It pours out like that. There's the water

and food waste that I was talking about. That's all been caught in

this filter, which I'll then get rid of. You get really obsessed

with what's nice oil and what's not. Knowing the gang that we got this

So that goes in and that's clear and it's all oil, with the odd bit

of burned food in it. If there was another oil collector next to me,

we'd both be commenting, "Yeah, that's the stuff, that's what we

like!". And once the used oil has been filtered, the nifty process of

converting it into bio-fuel can really begin. Now, pens and paper

at the ready, I'm going to test you on this afterwards. All right, this

is the bio-diesel processing plant. Waste cooking oil is transferred

into that holding tank. That goes into a bath.

FILM IS SPEEDED UP SO WORDS CAN'T BE HEARD.

And that goes for an hour at a temperature of 86 degrees. Did you

get that, everyone? Simple, really. This is the finished bio-diesel.

It's clear, it's orange and it's got a smell quite unlike anything

else I've ever smelled. Slightly chemical, but not at all like waste

cooking oil. It started its life as this, which is the waste cooking

oil. Everyone knows what that smells like. Quite fantastic,

really. You're right, Marcus, it is pretty impressive. And it must feel

good to help save the planet as your day job. The best thing about

this job is the fact that I feel like I'm really working for the

good guys, trying to do everything sustainably. Even just analysing

whether or not something is sustainable is quite fun and a

worthwhile pursuit in this day and age, I think, if you care about the

future of the planet. Oh, we do, Marcus, we do. Now, if you'll

accept the honour, I'd like to But now to someone with an even

more elevated title. This is the story of the man who became known

as Britain's worst fly-tipper. And here he is in action. 36 year old

Marcus Bairstow, a serial scoundrel who blighted Southampton for two

years with his outrageous rubbish dumping. Dumping that cost the

council a whopping �50,000 to clear up. It all started in 2008 with a

flurry of reports of fly-tipping across Southampton. Council

officers started mapping out the trail of waste that was being

dumped across the city on a daily basis. We had our city patrol

officers carrying out investigations and very quickly

they concluded that this was being carried out on a commercial basis,

not just ordinary residents, and that one person and one person only

was responsible for dumping this One personal fly-tipping every day

in a different place. That's an unbelievable amount of rubbish and

an unbelievably brazen operation. And you haven't even heard the half

of it. Bairstow was charging innocent businesses a pretty penny

for the so-called services he provided. The people Bairstow had

taken the rubbish from had paid a significant amount to him for the

disposal of it, not knowing that it was going to be dumped a few miles

away instead of being disposed of legally. But now comes the most

shocking part of this whole story. Nowhere was off limits for this

shameless scoundrel to dump his rubbish. Prepare yourselves, then

I'm not sure 'filthy' and 'rotten' are strong enough words to describe

the person who would do this. is the rubbish that first appeared

over in the gravel area behind me. And it gradually spilled out into

the main tarmac area, all adjacent to the graves. We were faced with a

bill of nearly �2,000 for the removal of this rubbish. We also

had asbestos to clear, which had to be done by another specialist

company. The heartless rogue had even dumped broken asbestos sheets

next to the church, a cancer causing killer. It beggars belief,

doesn't it? Well, dumping your rubbish anywhere is an anti-social

act, but to dump it next to a cemetery on consecrated ground is

particularly insensitive and completely against the feelings of

people visiting graves. I've never seen so much rubbish dumped. It's

absolutely, totally disgraceful. brought tears to my eyes when I saw

that fly-tipping there. I mean, Millbrook Church is a beautiful

church. Cue some divine intervention in the form of a tip-

off to the council from an anonymous caller who had taken the

registration number of a truck they'd seen driving away from the

churchyard. But the council needed indisputable evidence linking Mr

Bairstow with the crime. The chase was on and they were closing in on

their man. OK, this is an unadopted footpath, and this is another site

of Mr Bairstow's handiwork. My staff are responsible for gathering

evidence to prepare for court cases. They will sift through mountains of

rubbish in order to find any relevant information. And in this

case, Mr Bairstow had not been very careful with the rubbish that he'd

left and he did leave us fairly substantial clues as to where it

had come from. In the pile of smashed up debris, they found

flyers from a small business in the Shirley area of Southampton. Then

council investigators got the breakthrough they needed to crack

this case. When they checked CCTV footage from a street camera nearby,

they found they had a perfect shot of Bairstow's truck parked outside

the same business that the flyers came from. And witnesses saw him

loading up. He was seen to be removing items such as cardboard

boxes, the business flyers, some metal tubing. And when officers

compared those items captured on camera with the fly-tip dumped in

the alleyway, bingo! They had the missing part of the jigsaw.

identified that this was some of the rubbish that was taken away

from the small business in Shirley. Gotcha! Now, that's what I call

solid evidence. End of story? Not a bit of it. In yet another shocking

twist, investigators discovered that fly-tipping was only half of

Bairstow's lucrative scheme. thing that we found quite

despicable was that Mr Bairstow would not only dump his loads of

rubbish in an area, he would later go back, find the landowner and

then offer his services to get that rubbish cleared again. So, in

effect, he was getting a double whammy and we found that quite

appalling behaviour. Too right, Ken. The bare-faced cheek of it. Ken's

officers were constantly scouting the city for more evidence of

Bairstow's crimes, building a solid case against him. And, luckily for

them, our man was about to make a mistake that would seal his future

and, put it this way, it's not looking rosy. OK, we're now in the

middle of an industrial estate in Norgrove in Southampton. He

actually dumped the load along this grey car park on the right hand

side. This site can actually be seen very clearly, both from the

road here on my left, and also there are various CCTV cameras in

close proximity. So, Mr Bairstow had no qualms or anything dumping

the rubbish here in full view of all the local businesses. Careless,

but at least he gave the case for the prosecution a nice clear

picture. Thanks, Marcus! These people, they go to people's places,

they say, yeah, yeah, I've got the licence to take a rubbish. They pay

him �100, �150 to take their rubbish and he just dumps it. I

really hope these people are brought to court and they go to

prison over this. Well, consider you wish granted. Because of the

work of Ken and his colleagues. Mr Bairstow was found guilty of six

counts of fly-tipping, three breaches of duty of care and one of

failing to provide information. Bairstow got a two and a half year

sentence, I think, but that was reduced to two years in the end.

But he also got a five year ASBO which means he can't carry any

waste in a van anywhere in the country. Result! Britain's worst

fly-tipper behind bars. Sadly, there are plenty more where he came

from. But, luckily, there's a nationwide team of people working