District councillor calls for trackable cameras to help stop fly tipping

Trackable cameras could be used in the fight against fly-tippers in Atherstone and North Warwickshire according to North Warwickshire Borough Councillor.

The borough council's director of streetscape, Richard Dobbs, told this week's meeting of the community and environment board that it was just one of a series measures being looked at to tackle the problem.

Cllr Barry Lees (Con, Hartshill) highlighted the issue. He said: "We are getting fly-tipping quite a bit in Hartshill and it must be costing the council quite a bit because we are putting up cameras and as soon as we are putting them up they are being stolen.

"I don't know if anybody has any ideas about what we could do. It's just going on and on and it's going round in circles."

Cllr Margaret Bell (Con, Hartshill), who chaired the meeting, proposed that the item should be looked at more closely at the next meeting when it would be put on the agenda and Mr Dobbs said the council was one of a number who were having to deal with increased cases of fly-tipping.

He explained: "This has been a problem since the start of lockdown. We are deploying cameras and they are being removed in certain areas.

"We have a good relationship with the local rural crime team and the safer communities sub-group is looking at the fly-tipping action plan. There are a number of initiatives going on.

"We are looking at different camera technologies including some that can be accessed remotely and that can be tracked so that if they are removed we can see where they have gone to and they can feed back without having to be retrieved. It's that sort of technology that we are looking at so that we can stay one step ahead."