Fly-tipping... there's no excuse!

And they are being forced to spend hundreds and thousands of pounds to deal with the situation.

It is a gob-smacking amount of money for them to have to spend at a time when their budgets are already stretched beyond imagination.

And it is money that they should not have to spend.

People will point their figures at fewer “tips” for them to take their rubbish to.

And they will also claim that fortnightly refuse collections make it impossible to keep control of the waste they are generating.

Balderdash.

If you live in Pendle you can have carpets, furniture, white goods and large items of garden waste removed absolutely free of charge, but you will have to pay if you have been involved in a building or DIY project.

In Burnley there is a charge, but it is certainly cheaper than hiring a van and completing the necessary paper work to get rid of your rubble at the tip.

Many of you reading this will now be blaming unscrupulous builders who just can’t be bothered to dispose of the by-products of their trade responsibly.

It happens.

But a quick investigation leads me to believe that two-thirds of the assorted detritus that is illegally dumped in our back streets and countryside is left by residents not businesses.

And my assorted wanderings can confirm that such items as furniture, white goods, trampolines and even bags of nothing other than “normal” household waste can frequently been spotted.

Some of these items, where my wanderings take me, are clearly dumped by people who just get fed up of something and tipped it over their back fence into the adjoining field.

I am not averse to raising this with the residents in question, once even catching someone in the act. His excuse? He claimed that because he paid his council tax it should be collected.

Not sure how well that washed with the relevant enforcement officer!