'Culture' of fly-tipping in Luton must be cracked warns council leader

Despite the local authority removing a “huge volume of materials”, Labour Biscot councillor Tahmina Saleem warned of an attitude of entitlement in some cases.

Acknowledging that this “culture needs to be cracked”, she told the council’s overview and scrutiny board that the fly-tipping problem overall has dropped by 12 per cent during the past three years.

The issue was raised by town mayor and Labour Beech Hill councillor Javed Hussain during reflections on LBC’s corporate performance annual summary for 2025/26.

He outlined his concerns to the board around procurement, explaining: “There were 2,500 fly-tipping cases last time I looked.

“I want to know how many of those progressed as prosecutions, because fly-tipping is a constant one for all councillors to hear about.

“What are we doing at management level to address the legal side, as procurement and the legal (department) go hand-in-hand?” he asked. “If procurement is okay and then it gets stuck in legal, that’s not achieving this.”

Councillor Saleem replied: “We recognise the blockage and that we didn’t have sufficient staffing within legal and procurement.

“So we’ve expanded our legal team and we’re also increasing our procurement team exactly for the reasons you’ve identified.”

Councillor Hussain said: “That’s music to my ears, but are we collating the data because people are telling me they’re reporting it and not seeing action?

“They’re then providing updates and clogging up our email service. That shows you then the seeds of disconnect, if people feel they need to go to their councillors to get the fly-tipping and potholes sorted out.”

Councillor Saleem added: “That’s been reported widely and it’s certainly a flaw in the system.

“Even we as councillors think we’re not often told what’s being done. We’ll raise an issue. It gets acted on, but we’re not necessarily informed about this.

“It’s that information we need to know. When something happens, it needs to come back to ourselves and the residents.

“On fly-tipping, there’s been a 12 per cent reduction since 2023. There was 1,841 tonnes back then, while it was around 1,600 tonnes of rubbish collected last year.

“We’re collecting a huge volume of materials, but it doesn’t feel like that for residents because there’s a culture in the town where people feel they can.

“We need to crack that and have to change the culture. It’s houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) which are unscrupulous in doing that and there are companies around taking rubbish away cheaply.

“But residents need to be aware they shouldn’t be using these firms because they’re not registered with the Environment Agency. We can look at getting these figures circulated.”

Councillor Hussain thanked her “for recognising the flaw in the system”, saying: “I look forward to the next few months seeing some changes on that.”