Man dumped his rubbish on the floor after being told the tip was closed

A man has been fined £400 after leaving a rotary washing line on the floor at a recycling tip. David Driscoll, from Cwmbach, left the washing line on the floor on a grass verge around 20 feet from the waste disposal containers after he got fed up waiting for the tip to start accepting waste. Mr Driscoll had arrived at the Bryn Pica recycling site in Llwydcoed near Aberdare at 8.30am on Sunday, July 21. He entered the site and sat in a queue of traffic for around 30 minutes before his wife Diane asked a member of staff at the site what was going on. Mr Driscoll said the worker told his wife the site was temporarily not taking waste because so many people had turned up that morning and they were struggling with demand. Mr Driscoll said it got past 9.10am and he needed to be elsewhere, so he took the decision to leave the washing line on the floor beside the waste disposal area. He said he thought one of the workers could dispose of it at a later time.

Days later the couple received a letter through the post from senior streetcare enforcement officer Dean Vaughan who told Mr ODriscoll he had to attend an interview with him or face a £50,000 fine or six months in prison. Mr O’Driscoll attended the interview at Rhondda Cynon Taffs headquarters at the Treforest industrial estate on Thursday, August 14, where he was informed he would be fined £400 for fly-tipping. After the decision, Mr Driscoll told WalesOnline: I went into the recycling centre, waited for a long time and decided the best thing to do at the time was to place the line on the floor inside the recycling site for the staff members to deal with when they were able. I believed, genuinely, that was acceptable. In hindsight I can see why it wasn’t, but I was surprised at the wording of the letter and I am surprised they consider what Ive done to be fly-tipping. I looked up the definition of fly-tipping which is: The illegal deposit of any waste onto land which does not have a licence to accept it.

A spokesperson for Rhondda Cynon Taf county borough council said an investigation is ongoing. They said: “The council can confirm that a person was interviewed following an incident of fly-tipping and was issued with a fixed penalty notice of £400. This case is currently live and subject to an ongoing investigation.”