A councillor has called for more action to be taken to tackle fly-tipping after residents raised their concerns.
Labour councillor Gary Wilkinson said that more needed to be done not just in his Central Hove ward but across Brighton and Hove.
Fly-tipping had gone up by 120 per cent during the coronavirus lockdown but Councillor Wilkinson said that the problem was growing “long before the pandemic”.
Green councillor Amy Heley told him that the council had issued dozens of fines after putting in cameras at fly-tipping hotspots.
Councillor Wilkinson said: “There is a lack of understanding about the impact of fly-tipping.
“Many people perceive this as low impact and low cost.
“There are not many streets in our city that you could walk down regularly without coming across the kerb-side tipping of furniture and mattresses.
“It’s a criminal act and a blight on our environment, a source of pollution, a potential danger to public heath and a nuisance.”
Councillor Wilkinson said that fly-tipping cost the council and therefore residents more than £100,000 a year.
He called for a “robust and effective” strategy to deal with the rise in fly-tipping and a comprehensive review to look at how the council could improve the current position.
Green councillor Heley, who chairs the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee, said that the council had started using security cameras, including automatic number plate reading cameras, at fly-tipping hot spots.
The council had since issued more than 70 fines – and was drawing up a waste strategy that would include more ways to tackle fly-tipping.
