At tipping point over rubbish next to travellers' site

The eyesore, which is on farmland next to the Greenacres travellers site in Little Billington, has built up over the years despite frequent calls for Central Beds Council to clamp down on travellers.

In recent weeks the mess extended to 230 metres long, prompting the landowner to nominate the site as a ‘grot spot’ as part of the Clean for the Queen campaign.

However the LBO understands that travellers have now begun to clear the site themselves.

The landowner told the LBO: “After about ten years of putting up with it, they have now started clearing it up.

“It is good news for me until the next lot turns up, it was awful as it was.

“They have been flytipping there for ten years and on one occasion it got so bad that the council had to remove around ten lorry loads of rubbish.”

The landowner added that he is in regular contact with Central Beds Council, but in recent years has been given little help.

He said: “I’ve been in touch with the council on an almost weekly basis but they just pass me from one department to another. They always say that it is the landowner’s responsibility to clear it up, which legally is the case. Andrew Selous (South West Beds MP) has been battling on my behalf, as have some councillors. I just don’t have the recourses and finances to clear it.”

A spokesman for Central Beds Council said: “Most of the fly-tipping on the site in Little Billington has been cleared in the last the past ten days and work is continuing to remove the rest of it. We are currently investigating who dumped the rubbish there.”

The spokesman added that a man with a “proprietary interest” in one of the travellers’ site plots, close to where the fly-tipping was, had taken it upon himself to clear up the rubbish.

Do you know of a grot spot that isn’t being cleared? Send information/pictures to [email protected]