£14,600 CCTV camera lamppost plan to tackle chronic flytipping in Burngreave and Page Hall
It comes after it took two weeks for a heap of rubbish
Councillors have asked for a re-deployable CCTV camera to tackle the worst flytipping hotspots in a blighted Sheffield district.
The £14,600 plan to get eyes on some of the Burngreave council ward’s worst sites for dumped rubbish was signed off by the North East Local Area Committee this week.
The money - paid out of the committee’s allocated ‘ward pot’ - will fund the camera for the next three years and it will be installed on lampposts in the area in a bid to catch culprits in the act.
The plan comes with approval to deploy it at various locations up to three times a year.
Hotspots for consideration include Robey Street and Hinde Street in Page Hall, Ellesmere Walk in Burngreave and Firth Park Road in Firth Park.
It comes after a heap of rubbish dumped in Ellesmere Walk was only cleared away after a two week wait on September 15.
Ward councillor Mustafa Ahmed, for the Green Party, claims the flytipping was only cleared away because he posted about it to his Facebook page the day before.
He said: “We are fighting for a CCTV camera in Burngreave to place in hotspots.
“It should not take two weeks for action on flytipping in a park. Children, disabled residents and the local environment are being let down.”
Over the summer a huge community clean-up day was organised in the area.
It was organised by housing provider Arches, working with councillors and council officials, and it saw mountains of fly-tipped waste cleared off the streets.
Councillor Ahmed said at the time the problem persists because those responsible are rarely held to account.
“It is a very big issue in the area, and it continues because people keep getting away with it, and we are the ones that have to live with it,” he said.
Since then, as part of a raft of measures designed to improve Sheffield’s streets, new littering enforcement patrols have started.
Beginning in August, the Waste Investigations Support and Enforcement Ltd (WISE) now run a ‘dedicated proactive enforcement service’ across the city - handing out close to 500 on-the-spot fines for dog fouling and those caught dropping rubbish in just one month.