Episode 15 Filthy Rotten Scoundrels

Every day, a never-ending war is being waged across Britain to clean

up our towns and countryside. laziness. Just the general attitude

is disgraceful. The fact is not on their doorstep makes it all right.

If we made them clean it up, it would make them think twice. From

the tonnes of cigarette butts, dogs' mess and household rubbish to

tyres and builders' waste... Small minded people and it ruins it for

everybody. No respect for the countryside. We are on the

frontline of the clear-up and the fightback. With a dedicated team

tracking down the rogues and putting the "Great" back into

"Britain". It may harm your defence if you fail to mention...

today's programme, the amazing story of modern-day graffiti

taggers caught by good old- fashioned detective work. It was

the spray paint all over their fingers and cuffs of their sleeves.

And the fight to rid Bexhill's beaches of dreaded dog doo. As you

can see on the red area, in the summer between May and September,

dogs are not allowed on the beach at all. All that and Britain's

filthiest road. I don't think there was any rougher place in the

country than what this was. Welcome to the world of Filthy Rotten

First, we are in neath in South Wales. It's in a great location

surrounded by beautiful countryside and it's only a ten-minute drive

from the coast. But the whole area suffers from that old familiar

scourge - fly-tipping. I think it's an eyesore. It's also not very nice

for the people of the community who have to see the mess that's been

created around the area. They should give them a heavy fine.

giving my hometown a bad reputation. So there is plenty of local pride

here. And at the forefront of keeping that pride alive is a

dedicated team of local lads. Meet Leyton, Paul, Lyndon, Phil and Carl.

They are the waste enforcement team at Neath and Port Talbot Borough

Council. It's their job to track down and prosecute anyone making a

mess of this lovely area. We are going out on the road with the team

and it is a busy job. Every day, there are more reports to

investigate. First up, we are with team leader, Leyton. Today, he's

off to investigate a huge pile of rubbish that's just been dumped at

the side of the road. We are off to a dumping site now, a known hotspot

for fly-tipping. This is a pretty well-used road. It leads to the

local scrapyard, if you like. It tends to be subject to pretty

regular fly-tipping. People go to the scrapyard and they weigh in

what they can and they fly-tip the rest. The rest of the team are

already on site with the unenviable task of sifting through this

massive pile of rubbish in search of any clue as to who might have

dumped it. Found anything? No? Nothing? Just look at this. It's a

huge pile of building waste that looks like the remains of some

major house renovation dumped by a mean and selfish rogue who probably

thought no-one would see him on this secluded lane. Appalling!

is a mess, boys. Terrible. There's nappies and all sorts. Urgh, dirty

nappies?! How many doors is that? One, two, three, four? Look at that,

a bath! Looks like it might have been a jacuzzi. It's a dirty job,

cardboard and carpet and the remains of the tipper's

refreshments. Finally, a clue that at least helps pinpoint when this

lot was dumped. I have found a newspaper dated 28th July, so it is

fairly recent the stuff. Five men and an hour of digging, but

Leyton's boys are drawing a blank. But hope springs eternal in the

heart of the enforcement officer. The most mundane of items, any

scrap of paper could hold a vital clue. Receipts and maybe get

footage of them in the shop buying the things that's tipped in the

waste... There could still be something underneath. Well put,

Carl. The newest recruit to the team and brimming with optimism.

You would have thought you would have found one thing. People are

starting to wise up. Devious dumpers are getting rid of any

evidence before they tip. There is nothing here that could help the

lads prosecute this filthy rotter. Off to the next one now. Thanks,

lads. So, sadly, it is the council who will have to foot the bill of

getting rid of this lot. You are looking at between �500 and �1,000

maybe. Annoyed. Frustrated. Like I say, we usually manage to find

something within most illegal dumps. But there is no time to be

downhearted. On to another job and this time we are out with Phil.

He's been an enforcement officer for almost six years. Today, he's

on the case of a fly-tipper they have managed to identify. We are in

the Neath Valley where we had a complaint that a householder, a

lady, a tenant, had put a three- piece suite out in the rear lane so

it was just staying there. She told us she made arrangements with the

council to take it away. We found out that no such arrangement had

been made so a notice was served on her giving her 15 days to remove it.

Her 15 days are up and unless she's shifted her sofa, she will be

booking herself an appointment with the local judge. Nothing has

changed. This is the three-piece suite concerned. This is as it was

weeks ago. There's been no attempt to move it. Now, it's the afternoon

nap site for the local kittens. It's annoying and frustrating for

Phil. The woman knows she will end up in court but she has not

bothered to get herself out of the firing line. This case is quite

rare in the fact that we have had an admission that the lady has put

it there, we have phoned her a few times and tried to reason with her.

At this stage, it's not going to be removed. So she's about to force

our hand. It will be a fine and any costs we have incurred in preparing

the case as well. Next job, we are out with Paul and Carl. Paul, in

the passenger seat, has been on the job for five years. Now Carl might

be in the driving seat but he's the new boy on the block, joining just

six months ago. They make a good team. In fact, they look spookily

like one another. Oh! This is Aberavon, this is the hotspot. From

here down, you see there are gated lanes. The theory is with the

alleys gated off, only the residents who back on to them can

use them keeping them cleaner and safer. But it doesn't always work

that way. So now the alleys are part of Paul and Carl's routine

checks. OK, we have a classic Aberavon lane now. It was cleaned

on Tuesday and you will see what we are up against. Open sesame! It is

no Aladdin's cave. The place is strewn with litter. Someone has put

their bag out late. Nine times out of ten the seagulls come down, rip

open the bags and it is scattered. There's the bag. It's been ripped

open. The bag gets blown away. seagulls, cats, dogs... The tipsy

tripper! Cause of many an environmental hazard. And there's

more. The worst possible thing a waste enforcement officer can

witness - the thing they all dread - a bag where someone's mixed

recycling with regular waste! Don't look directly at it, guys. This bag,

as you can see, is plastic with paper. So it wouldn't have been

collected as it is contaminated. Overcoming their inate fear they

search for clues as to who might have committed this heinous crimes.

Not one address. This time, the arch villain gets away with it. I

am being cheeky, but the truth is that it is exactly this kind of

thing that messes up the place for everyone else. We will take this

home with us rather than sending the boys back. Direct action and

problem solved. We will be back with the boys later on their

relentless quest to tidy up Wales. Now for a story that would have the

Fat Controller up in arms. It's a problem that causes massive delays

and countless cancellations across the rail network. Yet it's not ice

on the track or the wrong kind of leaves. This is a story where the

pen is mightier than the weather. We are talking tagging. To you and

me it is graffiti. To some kids, it is art. It costs millions every

year to clean up. It's a big problem. It costs us �3.5 million

every year to clear it up. We should be spending that elsewhere

on the network. It is not just a case of elbow grease to get the

paint off the trains. This is one of our main cleaning rows at

Bedford Train Care Depot. We have a unit that's been graffitied

recently. As you can see, you have some residual paint damage. The

vinyl has been damaged here and paint work's been damaged. So what

we have got to do, we will have to replace all the external vinyl, the

livery, on this train. That will cost us �37,000 to do this one

coach. What?! �37,000 for one single coach? That's more than the

average annual wage. A lot more! I am gobsmacked and with 20,000 miles

of tracks, 2,500 stations and thousands of bridges and tunnels,

the network is one giant canvas. Graffiti doesn't have a place on

the railway. It makes people feel unsafe. It makes people think the

infrastructure is not being looked after. It is unacceptable. In the

eyes of the law, it is a crime. Let's call them what they are -

they are criminals. They are committing a crime. If they are

trespassing, they risk a fine of �1,000. As John knows only too well,

a fine is the least of the vandals' worries. At Cricklewood Depot, we

had a graffiti attack there and a train was fully coated with paint.

Unfortunately, the graffiti artist got hit by the paint as it left the

depot. In that occasion, the graffiti artist was killed

undertaking what he was doing. The risks are really real. It's a

terrible story and it makes it more surprising that vandals would

strike in the dead of night. This is a tale of modern tagging caught

by good old-fashioned detective work. It started with a nightshift

for PC Bevan of Cambridgeshire Police. This is the middle of no-

where and this car was parked up by the bridge. A parked car in a lay-

by? I bet we are all thinking the same thing! Could be a couple

necking, who knows. We better check it out. So we stopped. Had a look

at the car. Nobody with it. It was unusual that it had spray paint

cans in the footwell which I thought was strange. So ran some

checks via the police computers, all come back OK, all insured,

taxed, MoTed. So we thought we would head into the village. Later

the same night, he came across the car again and this time the driver

and his mate were inside. PC Bevan checked their ID. All fine. But

there was something not quite right. It was the spray paint all over

their fingers and cuffs of their sleeves, and even on the shoes.

much for the theory of a lovers' tryst, there was something more

suspicious going on. The story they were giving us changed a few times.

It started with, "I have picked him up because he's had a row with his

girlfriend." So lovers' tiff as opposed to lovers' tryst. Well,

their story just kept changing. Then it changed to, "We have come

from Cambridge where we were muralling a legal graffiti site."

So two or three different stories. It kept changing. It wasn't enough

to go on but PC Bevan had a hunch about this case. He got the boys'

details and returned to where he found the car. When we pulled up at

the bridge and opened the car doors, we could smell paint, solvent, so

we looked around with torches, looking in bushes, and came across

a rucksack that had been left abandoned, not wet, so it had been

there only a short time. That rucksack contained spray paint cans,

a digital camera which we had a quick look on and had pictures of

graffiti on them, black woolly hats, gloves, pens, markers. We explored

further down the embankment and the inside of the bridge was full of

graffiti. Bevan alerted the British Transport Police. A couple of days

later he received a call. I got a call from an officer from London

who was very interested in the males that we had stopped and also

the tags on the cameras and the piece of paper that I had seized

off them which was Kush, which was the tag. Kush by name, not so

cushty by nature! These boys had form and their tag was already

known. Sergeant Tubbs at the British Transport Police was on the

case. We had been looking at patterns of criminal damage in the

area of Cambridge and one of the tags that was found to have been

sprayed on the railway bridge that night was significant to us.

Sergeant Tubbs had seen the tag before on railway property and was

already hunting the vandal. His hopes were raised when PC Bevan

told him the boys had green spray paint on their fingers the night

they had seen them. It was like a paint swach, a perfect match to

some graffiti on a train carriage in the area. There had been

reported damage at the Cambridge sidings which is not far from where

the two had said they had been painting on the legal graffiti wall.

The paint on their clothes was a dead giveaway, it was the same as

the paint on the trains and enough to arrest the boys and search their

homes. We managed to retrieve clothing with paint on, balaclavas,

gloves, graffiti spray cans. The general tools that a graffiti

vandal would use to commit crime. Incredible! They hadn't thought of,

well, covering their tracks. The green paint had already linked them

to one night of vandalism, what the team found next would provide vital

evidence to another crime. This picture was taken from one of the

suspect's walls. This newspaper cutting here is a press release

from the local police asking for information for criminal damage

that had been done to a hotel building in Cambridge city centre.

They were saying vandals had climbed high up on to the hotel and

dubbed three tags. So proud of their own work, these boys couldn't

help but keep a newspaper article about it. They were collecting

their own evidence! This to me represents memorabilia, a trophy,

which the vandal would keep in his home to celebrate that he's got

some sort of attention regarding the damage he's caused. I think

it's one of their flaws. They keep evidence and they do make our job

easier because once we recover the materials, they really do put

themselves in the crime. The boys hadn't just been collecting their

own evidence, their stash of photos implicated a notorious graffiti

vandal known to the police as Mr Big who until now, had remained at

large. That tag was Big which is quite a dominant tag in Cambridge

at the moment, or certainly was. Big's days of tagging were over too

and all three were about to get the attention they deserved. The boys

might have dreamed of being Banksy, but in reality they were bang to

rights! The evidence against them was overwhelming. As much as they

wanted to try and defend themselves from all these crimes, they had no

choice but to plead guilty because the evidence that they had was

significant enough for them to plead guilty at court. And guilty

they were. The three of them were handed a whopping 6 50 hours of

community service and ordered to pay over �6,000 towards the clean-

up of their handiwork. That is what Now, we all hate litter and we all

really hate graffiti, but what we all really, really hate is this...

But I found somewhere where you can stroll free from worry about where

you are treading. Where the air is fresh and the pavements look like

this. Welcome to the beautiful, the fragrant, the spotless Bexhill-on-

Sea in East Sussex. It wasn't always like this. Rother Council

used to get lots of complaints about dog poo on the promenade.

don't like it when other people leave dog excrement around. It

gives dog owners a bad name. As a dog owner, you tend to be tarred

with the same brush. That is unfair. So I think I get very cross with

dog owners who don't clear up. dog owners were getting fed up. So

they brought in this man, Robin Emery, environment enforcement

officer, a former policeman and dog owner. Dog fouling is a particular

problem. It's something that upsets the public a lot. It's very

annoying. I'm a dog owner myself. I'm a responsible dog owner so I

don't take kindly to people who let their dogs mess and walk on and

leave it for somebody else to step in. So how did Bexhill turn around

its foul fortunes? Well, quite simple. It banned dogs. OK, I'm

exaggerating. What it did do was restrict where dogs could go during

the summer. We are on Bexhill seafront and this is controlled in

the summer months by local dog control orders. There is one of the

signs. On the red area here, in the summer between May and September,

dogs are not allowed on the beach at all. Simple and effective. In

most other places dogs have to be kept on a lead. Today, Robin's on

pooch patrol on the prom making sure everyone knows that rules is

rules. If we see anybody contravening any of the regulations,

I have a fixed penalty book and I can issue a fixed penalty notice

which will cost them �50, if they pay it straightaway. �75 if they

are late in paying. If they don't pay it and challenge it, we can

take them to court where they can get a fine of �1,000. Ouch! That is

enough to give you PAWS for thought! This message is getting

through to the local dog walkers. This is just about the local dog

control orders in the summer time. You have your dog on a lead, so

that is not a problem. Also the dogs aren't allowed on the beach.

know. That's fine. You are aware... Thank you very much. You know about

the local dog control orders in the summer time? Yes, only certain

parts of the beach. That's it. 54 to 77. Yeah. All right. Thank you

ever so much. Thank you for your time. It's 54, up by the Sovereign

Light Cafe and then up to 77 which is up... You can go further over?

You can. See how brilliantly this scheme is working, all the people

Robin is talking to know the rules and crucially no-one's complaining.

There's lots of responsible dog owners who know where to have the

dogs on lead and where not to. There are still some who don't.

Well, there will always be some filthy rotten dog owners who refuse

to scoop the poop. But there's really though excuse. One of the

other things the council has done is to put in extra bins for dog

waste. There's one every 70 metres, all the way along the seafront and

they are emptied every day. What a service! Everyone's a winner.

Nobody likes the job of picking up dog waste. For me, personally, and

my team, it is the worst job. Since the dog bins have been put down

here on the promenade, there's been quite a transformation in the

amount we are not clearing up. what exactly does quite a

transformation mean? Well, since this scheme started at the

beginning of the summer, it has been a four-legged runaway success.

Since then, we have had no reported incidents of dog fouling on the

esplanade. Not a single complaint about dog poo, what a result! Man's

best friend is just that again at Bexhill. Now, everyone likes to be

beside the seaside! We are out on the road again in

South Wales with the Fab Five. Waste enforcers dedicated to

keeping the place clean and tidy. Our next job is with Lyndon who is

checking out a report about a mattress just dumped on the

pavement. There is nothing more rewarding than catching a serial

fly-tipper and so they get their comeuppance in court. Lyndon is a

man with a passion. He lives and works here and genuinely cares

about the area. I live in the village just outside Swansea so I

travel in so I come to the area with my children, so it's pretty

much a two-pronged thing for me. I want to keep the area tidy for the

residents and for my children to enjoy it, too. We have come to pick

up the routine call. As I have driven into the street, next to the

Mermaid's Fish and Chip Shop, there has been a bed mattress dumped.

Looks an old mattress. I was up here yesterday, it wasn't here, so

we will have a look at this. That's going to have to be removed quite

quickly. It is next to the fish and chip shop. So if somebody sets fire

to that, we will have some problems. It is hard to miss and more than

just a trip hazard. Who would just dump this at the side of the road?

Eagle-eyed Lyndon has spotted something that might give him the

lead he needs. I don't know if you can see, there's a camera, I'm

hoping we will get CCTV of the offender depositing the mattress.

He is straight on to the case. I love this man's enthusiasm. But he

will have to contain himself a bit longer. I have spoken to the lady,

the manager has got access to the CCTV. He's not going to be in until

2.00. So I have left my card with her. He's going to ring me at 2.00

and I will pop up and have a good look at it. Fingers crossed the

cameras come up trumps for Lyndon. There is nothing like a bit of sea

air of rooting around in rubbish, but this is no stop for a paddle

and an ice-cream for Paul and Carl. Just like in Bexhill-on-Sea, dogs

aren't allowed on the beach in peak season. Unlike at Bexhill, not

everyone is so well trained. We did do some of the beaches yesterday.

There is another reason for enforcing the rules. Aberavon beach

has Blue Flag Korean beach status, something they treasure and

obviously want to preserve -- clean beach status, something they

treasure and obviously want to preserve. Shame about that blot on

the landscape - they call it England! You cheeker

whippersnapper! I think I deserved that after my weather comment.

lot of people don't take any notice of the signs. Cute and fluffy pet

pooches maybe, but if they are going to threaten Aberavon's Blue

Flag status Paul and Carl need to keep up their dog patrols. I can't

see much, Carl. No dogs on the beach. All clear. All clear.

dogs? No dog owners? This must be the quietest day of the year. I

don't envy the ice-cream van man today. At least a Blue Flag status

is safe. Back with Lyndon in Neath, the highest law in the land has

complained because local residents have been putting their rubbish

over the road at the courthouse instead of outside their own homes.

The court pays commercial rates to get rubbish removed so they say

their neighbours are costing them dearly. We have had evidence from

them relating to one of the properties opposite so we will call

to the property now and have a chat with them. But the residents say

they are trying to be helpful, putting their rubbish where there

are already big bins instead of cluttering up the narrow pavements

outside their houses. So Lyndon's been called in to do a bit of door

knocking. I have had a complaint regarding waste being presented in

the car park or outside... Tell us where we are supposed to put our

bags. Outside your property. sounds like Lyndon is the one

getting the telling off! present them outside of your

property. Yeah. Who will clean them up... We will remove them on your

designated day. That is where the binmen came so I thought it would

be easier for them to pick them up from there. It's been taken by

their commercial... Hang on, there's someone else who wants a

word, too! Do you put yours over there? Yes. All the drunks will

kick them. Yes, what's been happening... That's what we do.

When the rubbish gets kicked all over the road, the council will

have to clean it up. I appreciate that. We can't have waste presented

within the commercial waste because they are getting charged for it.

Your concerns are the fact drunks are kicking over the bins? Yes.

will ring you at 2.00. No problem. No problem. I will tell you where

to put it! Thanks for your time. That was below the belt. He is only

trying to do his job! We will be back with the Fab Five later. And

there's more pain in store for Lyndon. It is infuriating. I'm a

taxpayer as well. We are paying for this in the long run. No need for

it. I'm taking you for a drive in the countryside. Look at this. It's

a drive along what became known as Britain's filthiest road. For the

past 15 years, Norwood Lane in Peterborough has become a dumpers'

paradise and a local eyesore. Norwood Lane is very untidy. Looks

a real mess. Why do people do that? You would see rats running past. It

was disgusting. There were mattresses, old fridges, sofas, and

general household clutter. rubbish up to here, right across,

it used to come down in this fashion, all the way. Right out up

to here. This is the bit of road you had to travel on. Besides

vehicles, they used to run up the bank. That was from the top right

the way down, right the way down to the bottom. Unbelievable. Harry

Grant lives on the travellers' site at the end of this road. As you can

see, they take pride in where they live. For years, he and other

residents had complained about the state of the lane they had to drive

down to get home. Their cries for help fell on deaf ears. So last

year, they decided enough was enough. And they called in the big

guns. A year ago, I had a letter from the local MP and attached to

it was a letter from some local residents from a travellers' park

in Peterborough. I read the letter. It was saying they were living in

appalling conditions with fly- tipping blighting their lives. They

included some photographs that they sent showing the examples of the

sort of fly-tipping that was happening. You can see from this

photo there's children's toys here, so somebody who has had a house

clearance and a big clear-up has brought it down or paid somebody to

bring down the rubbish from their house and tipped it on the lane

where these people live. There's rubble from houses that have been

knocked down where they have picked the bricks up and put them down.

It's affected the road because the rubbish goes into the road and it

makes the paving difficult there to drive on. Here, appalling, asbestos.

Lots of asbestos. There are young children that don't know what

asbestos is that would be going up, they could be touching it or

playing in it. It is very frightening. Asbestos?! What kind

of person thinks it is OK to just dump this anywhere? Let alone on a

road leading up to a place where children and families live. The

shameful list goes on. Bottles, tins, glass, dead animals, sheep,

chickens, even cows' heads. We picked up 24 needles that they had

been using, whoever had been using them, they were put into a bag and

they were dumped in the middle of the road out here. Everything you

can mention, from top, from here, down to the end. I was shocked to

see how bad it was and I phoned up the gentleman who contacted me, Mr

Grant, and he explained it had been going on for 15 years which seemed

unacceptable. I don't think there was any rougher place in the

country than what this was. years! No wonder it was called

Britain's filthiest road. It wasn't just the travellers who were

suffering. For the local Fire Brigade, this lane had become a

trouble hotspot. Norwood Lane used to be one of our regular customers.

We used to get called probably five or six times a week. It was a

regular thing. We would always get called out to fly-tipping, lots of

rubbish, tree cuttings, quite commonly that would involve gas

cylinders as well. It's a terrible story, isn't it? The Fire Brigade

called out almost every day of the week and residents being put in

danger, even ambulances couldn't get past! My father-in-law - this

will be 12 or 13 years ago - he had a stroke on the site. Now because

the road was that bad, we couldn't get a ambulance down the road. We

had to take him over the bridge to the ambulance. That road was in

such a state they wouldn't come down it. Even after all this, still

nothing was being done to end the fly-tipping. The residents felt

like no-one was listening because they were travellers. I think they

probably felt at that time that nobody cared, that they weren't

treated as other citizens were treated, that their local

neighbourhood was nothing like other local neighbourhoods within

the city. Whilst they paid rent on their properties, they paid council

tax, tax for employment they were in, they were not treated equally.

You would never see this in a main street in a council estate what

there was down here. You would never see that. Unfortunately for

Harry and his neighbours, some Peterborough residents were

convinced it was the travellers themselves who were doing the

dumping. One of the problems was that when ever fly-tipping occurred,

there was a strong feeling it was the travellers from the park that

created the fly-tipping. The people on the site was getting the blame

for it, which I kept telling them it wasn't the people on the site.

It was the people that was coming from miles around, from Corby,

King's Lynn, from Wisbech, they were coming from miles around to

fetch their rubbish here. What is more astonishing about all of this

is that the council tip is just half a mile away from this lane.

Why weren't people taking their rubbish there? Well, apparently,

once the queues at the tip got too long some shameless rogues decided

their time was too precious so would drive to Norwood Lane and

dump their rubbish there. Disgusting! The lane became filled

with so much junk that some people even thought it was part of the

official council dump. The only way to stop these terrible tippers in

their tracks was to catch them red- handed. Enter Wayne, the wonderkid

with his box of tricks. These cameras enable us to get 360

degrees all the way around the van. We have a pan, tilt and zoom camera

that can see up to 200 metres away. We have a front camera which

monitors everything that is coming in the front and also one at the

rear so that we can track vehicles or people or anything that's going

around the van. Some good old- fashioned surveillance. I love it!

It wasn't long before Wayne's magic eyes came up trumps. These were

some of the guys he caught on camera. Take a close look. They

have spotted the surveillance van and are now quickly loading stuff

back on to their truck pretending to be here for a spot of spring

cleaning, are we? Nice try! Evidence is being used with

Peterborough City Council to take people to court with the aid of

still photographs and videos that we have collected for them. So far,

evidence from the covert camera operation has led to four fly-

tippers being prosecuted. And more importantly, has stopped anyone

else dumping stuff here. So now it's just a case of clearing the

road and after 15 years building bridges with the travelling

community. I feel proud of the fact that working with the traveller

community we have been able to create this beautiful really

environment in which when they come home, when travellers come home

from work at night, or go to work, they can pass through on their

daily routine and it is a very special feeling to be able to feel

that somehow we have made a difference. I think it is beautiful.

It is lovely. I'm very pleased that it's happened. You know, a lot of

people kept saying to me that this wouldn't happen, you will never

stop it. Don't matter how much you try, what you do, what you don't,

you will never stop it. But I want to prove them wrong. And proved

them wrong you have. It is a great result and finally Peterborough has

lost the dubious reputation of being home to Britain's filthiest

road. Back in Neath, Phil has something pretty filthy to sort out

himself. He's on his way to a housing estate north of Port Talbot

where there is a dumper not heeding a warning. Having spoken to the

gentleman, he has confirmed he has put the building waste outside and

it was going to be an indefinite period before he could remove it.

So what's happened is a notice has been served on the gentleman giving

him 15 days to remove the waste and basically it is a check to see

whether the waste is still in-situ. Surely the legal threat will have

pushed the fly-tipper into action? No. The rubble is still sitting

there. Basically, we have four industrial sacks full of rubble.

There is a black sack which is full of the same contents. What normally

happens is I put a file together and it goes to our legal section

for a prosecution. You are talking about a fine. There will be

substantial costs, too. So the scoundrel could end up with a fine

much higher than the costs of removing this rubble in the first

place. The fool! The team are not giving up. Lyndon is out in the

country after a call about a fly- tip. This area is popular with fly-

tippers. They said there's a large fly-tip in a rocked area just off

the lane. We will see what's there. Urgh! Look at this. Everything

including the kitchen sink. Look like a house clearance, ranging

from kitchens, lino. It is quite a substantial fly-tip. This is

disgusting. Whoever did this clearly just drove up here and

dumped the lot without a thought for the countryside or the poor

soul who has got to go through it by hand. That's you, Lyndon. We are

photographing things like carpets so if we have a potential offender,

we can try and link the carpet to That's all photographed now so what

we do now, I get some gloves on and we will sift through the waste to

find some evidence. That's full of soil. Looks like a large roll of

underlay, this. Unfortunately, these tippers know a thing or two

about hiding their identity. If you look at this now, this is somebody

that's probably pretty streetwise here. What they have done, they

have torn off part of the delivery packaging, in all probability

that's containing a name and address. So they probably season

tip these lot. That's something guaranteed to wind Lyndon up.

excuse, is there? If it's domestic, you have council-run skips, we will

take it. Commercially, a lot of the time the members of the public pay

the people for supposedly tipping of it legally. This unfortunately

is the end result. It soon becomes clear that this lot didn't come

from a domestic dumper. Definitely from a commercial premises, this.

Even after three years in the job, Lyndon can't understand why people

do this. It is infuriating. I'm a taxpayer. We are ending up paying

for this in the long run. Absolutely ridiculous. No need for

it. I have to say I'm impressed with the amount of effort Lyndon is

putting in to going through this lot. If only it equalled results.

That's all bags of soil again. Again, no evidence there. So I have

been through it all. There is no evidence here. We will have to get

cleansing lads up with the lorry to remove this and hopefully there is

something underneath it. You are probably looking at several hundred

pounds both to remove it and dispose of it legally. It's

infuriating. So sadly another unsolved case for the enforcement

team and Lyndon's not a happy chappy. These people are criminals.

There's no two ways about it. There's a cost both to the

environment and there's a cost to the authority and in turn to the

taxpayer. So they are criminals. The Fab Five have had some success.

Phil's lady with the sofa in the back alley admitted guilt and will

be fined at least �200. The council had to remove the furniture. The

building rubble was moved at the last possible moment so the threat

worked in the end. But poor Lyndon, the CCTV near the dumped mattress

only covered the road in front of the shop. Not the parking space

where the mattress was dumped. Better look next time, mate. It's a

rotten job but luckily there's a whole army of people working