A mysterious case of fly-tipping immunity

When is fly-tipping not fly-tipping? I think I can explain, now the pile of rubble has finally moved from the hedgerow after a most unusual conversation with the local council.

After weeks of trying to get to the bottom of why one householder in Surrey was being allowed to chuck his building refuse into the lane outside his house, I got through to a chap at the local authority who told me he had gone to have a look at the mess and could see nothing wrong with it.

‘You mean you didn’t see the pile of broken drains heaped up outside his house in the hedgerow, by the black and white warning chevron on the bend?’

He said that he had not seen anything that broke the law. ‘We must be talking about two different places,’ he said. I went over the address with him and confirmed that we were both looking at the same place. Yes, he had just gone there, he said, and had seen nothing that required the council to take action.

‘Well, I just drove past and he’s still storing rubble, building firm signs and heaps of old drains in the hedgerow, and there’s a smaller pile thrown into the road outside his drive, forcing cars and cyclists to swerve round it.’

‘I didn’t see anything like that,’ said the man from the council that is normally very hot on such things. So hot, in fact, that if you leave so much as an incorrectly placed wheelie bin or one with a lid that isn’t closed properly outside your house you risk being slapped with a fine.

‘So you saw nothing?’ I said. ‘Nothing at all. Thin air.’ ‘Ahh,’ he said, sighing heavily, ‘I mean, that bit of stuff is just related to the works in progress.