AN EXTRA £182,000 will go towards clamping down on fly-tipping and unauthorised encampments in Bucks next year.

Draft council budget papers have revealed the cash is being set aside to bolster the authority’s enforcement against the two issues.

Last year, only £15,000 was allocated for work towards fighting unauthorised encampments.

READ MORE: Bucks fly-tipping builder faces fine of £1,300

Of the extra £182,000 earmarked for tackling the problems, £100,000 will go towards developing a strategy to combat gypsy and traveller unauthorised encampments.

Martin Dickman, neighbourhood boss at Buckinghamshire Council, explained: “Next financial year, we’re going to look at an unauthorised encampments strategy policy.

“As you know, probably if you’re from the Wycombe area, in the old Wycombe council days, there was an injunction at a number of sites.

“That had to stop because of changes to legal policy.

“What we’re going to be doing next financial year is to develop an unauthorised encampments strategy and the £100,000 is to do that piece of work.”

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Mr Dickman was asked whether this strategy will include allocating land to authorised encampments, too.

He responded: “That will be part of the work and what we need to look at within the strategy.

“Almost certainly we’ll have to do a serious look at potential transit sites.

“If you have transit sites in your county it allows the police to use their Section 61 powers, when relevant, to move on travellers.”

The remaining £82,000 of the allocated extra budget will go towards clamping down on fly-tipping.

READ MORE: Fly-tipping issue continues to blight Bucks

Buckinghamshire Council has outlined a ‘no tolerance’ policy towards the issue since the authority’s formation in April 2020, which included introducing fines of up to £400 for those caught fly-tipping.

Council bosses were commended for their work against fly-tipping at a budget meeting last week.

Councillor Ralph Bagge said: “It’s been noticeable in the past couple of months the number of news releases the council has put out flagging up successes on prosecuting fly-tippers.

“Given the success of that activity, what’s in your budget for next year around supporting or enhancing the enforcement aspect of the service?”

Mr Dickman responded: “It’s £82,000 for the financial year. That will go in the base budget and that will fund additional enforcement work and resource change to the team to make them more effective.”

Councillor Bill Chapple, the council’s environment boss, claimed 60 per cent of all fly-tipped waste comes from outside Buckinghamshire.

He added: “We are very strict with waste and with fly-tipping. Across the country we have seen increased fly-tipping since coronavirus pandemic.

“We were much better in 2019, but across the country fly-tipping has increased. We are stringent. We’ve got some good officers who enforce it. We’ve got good working relationships with the police.

“We want to identify who’s doing it, we want to stop them doing it. We have the ability to put a fixed penalty notice on the minor issues.

“If somebody drops off [rubbish] we don’t want them necessarily to be in prison, but they’ll have to pay us £400 and it’s far better to get rid of waste at the household waste centre.”

The budget for tackling unauthorised encampments and fly-tipping was discussed at a Buckinghamshire Council budget scrutiny meeting on Thursday, January 14.

The authority’s draft budget has been approved and councillors will vote on the final budget in February.