In 1998 our Civic Amenity centre was closed leaving our nearest recycle centre at Rayleigh. This has undoubtably caused a big increase in the incidence of fly tipping.
Littering and dog mess are a nationwide problem and our village is no exception. The council regularly clear rubbish from the streets, however the litter in the parks and footpaths is rarely cleared except by volunteers.
At the Common we don't have a huge problem, I suspect because people realise the amount of effort that has gone into restoring it by local volunteers. However I do regularly see empty beer cans, plastic bottles, chip wrappers and discarded dog poo bags over there. This is just disrepectful to our volunteers!
We do have skips at the Rec from time to time, enabling parishioners to dispose of their waste, however these are often full within an hour or two of them being delivered. We need far more of these.
I would like to see the Parish Council organise more volunteer litter picking days and put more pressure on Rochford Council and Essex Highways to help clear up fly tipping and litter, not just on public highways, but also in privately owned land such as farms. We need better signage, more fines and more publicity.
I'd also be keen to try some of the initiatives being used elsewhere, such as marking dog poo with highly coloured spray paint, or little flags. This has been proven to reduce the incidence of dog poo due to the shame factor. Posters proclaiming that dog poo causes diseases and blindness in children have also been found to be successful.
We also need the authorities to show more willingness to prosecute. The picture below shows a recent fly tip behind Star Lane fishing lakes which had used nappies and rotting food in it. I reported this mess numerous times and had real problems in getting them to deal with it, until Councillor Jo McPherson got involved. The mess was cleared up, however no action was taken against the fly tippers depite me giving clear photographic evidence of who it belonged to.
