Community hits out at flytippers creating village eyesore

A FURIOUS community leader has declared war on flytippers who are spoiling the entrance to a pretty Saddleworth hamlet.

The car parts dumped at Lydgate

Jennifer Greenwood is chair of Love Lydgate, the community group for the village which is on Oldham Council’s boundary and borders Tameside by a link road at Mossley.

The unscrupulous fly tippers are craftily depositing rubbish on waste land just below a sign welcoming visitors to the community.

Recently, car parts were spread over the site and Jennifer said: “Two young men in a white van dumped stuff last week.

“They were seen by a lady from the village but she was too frightened to stop and so didn’t get the type of vehicle or a registration number.

“However, one of the residents has looked at the material, and it is the full interior of a black Ford Focus C Max 2007 to 11 or Ford Kuga. There are also some Mercedes parts there too.

“We work so hard to keep our area looking clean, safe and attractive but we can’t deal with something like this ourselves.”

Another disgruntled villager said: “There was an old mattress and a pile of children’s toy dumped the other week. It’s making the place look a real sight.”

An Oldham Council spokesperson said they are planning to recruit three additional enforcement officers as part of the council leader’s plan to invest in a new £800,000 seven-day operation to clean up the borough.

And a spokesperson for Tameside Council declared: “Fly-tippers within Tameside can expect to be dealt with very sternly.

“The council has a dedicated enforcement vehicle which is staffed by officers who remove mess, look for evidence of those responsible, and have the power to issue penalty notices.

“The tiny minority who dump rubbish illegally need to realise that the money for clear-ups comes at the expense of hard-pressed frontline services.”

To report fly-tipping in Oldham call 0161 770 2244 or visit: www.oldham.gov.uk/flytipping