NEW wireless cameras will give enforcement officers another tool to catch fly-tippers across Caerphilly.
National figures show 3,590 incidents of illegal waste dumping were recorded across the county borough last year.
At a meeting of Caerphilly Council’s environment committee, on Tuesday June 16, members heard officers want to improve on “poor” enforcement figures by deploying better CCTV cameras to known fly-tipping hotspots.
CCTV was a hot topic when the council was setting its budget earlier this year, with concerns that cuts to staffing could lead to a reduced service – something council officers denied.
Cllr Shane Williams said CCTV acted as a “deterrent” to troublemakers and asked whether officers were “comfortable and satisfied with the provision that we’ve got now”.
Council officer Tim Keohane said the local authority was replacing and updating older cameras with new models running on 4G mobile connections, which could be “redeployable” when necessary.
“They can be moved to hotspots,” he said. “If we identify an area where there’s currently no need for a camera, that camera can be taken away and put in an area where there is a need for it… providing there’s infrastructure for it – we’re quite flexible.”
A committee report shows the council currently has more than 180 cameras covering 28 towns and villages.
The cameras are also used to monitor crime and antisocial behaviour, and have been called upon to help police responding to serious welfare callouts.
On fly-tipping, Cllr Williams said he’d heard calls from residents “to say if only we could put cameras in known hotspots, it might go a long way towards resolving some of that issue”.
“The one thing we haven’t been great at, up to now, is being really proactive with the use of cameras and proactive campaigns… in respect of fly-tipping,” officer Maria Godfrey told the committee.
She said the council was “really going to be working on” improving its fly-tipping enforcement this year, after buying “a big pile of cameras” and planning to work in conjunction with other agencies, such as Natural Resources Wales and the DVLA.
Cllr Steve Skivens said proactive monitoring is “a very good tool” and cameras “can provide good information and evidence, particularly in areas where people may be reluctant to make calls to the police or other authorities”.
Fellow committee member Cllr Adrian Hussey welcomed consistent figures on fly-tipping fines.
But members heard the council’s prioritisation of fly-tipping callouts could also impact on enforcement of other rules.
Cllr Hussey noted figures that showed there were no fixed penalty notices issued for dog fouling last year, down from 17 two years earlier.
Ms Godfrey explained the enforcement team had been reduced from eight members to six, and had also received “high numbers of fly-tipping calls”.
“What that means is officers are reactively responding to fly-tipping calls, and anything else that comes in [means] patrolling suffers,” she said. “And patrolling is where we identify the dog-foulers, the litterers.
“Going forward we will be undertaking a lot more proactive campaigns.”
