'This is outrageous' - £20,000 spent on clearing up 45 tonnes of rubbish after one of the biggest flytips near Harborough

The three-day council offensive to clean up the two ugly mini-mountains of building rubbish off the busy A6 went ahead last week.

It’s the biggest single incident of flytipping that stunned Harborough District Council has ever had to tackle.

The gang behind the eco-crimes dumped the vast piles of rubbish on access roads on the stretch of the A6 from Kibworth to Leicester.

Furious Cllr Phil King, the council’s leader, is now calling for the offenders to be sent to jail.

Cllr King told the Harborough Mail: “This is just outrageous.

“These people have just driven up and dumped 45 tonnes of rubbish off a main road in our fantastic district.

“This is the most serious case of flytipping we’ve ever dealt with.

“The culprits should be jailed.

“They should be seriously punished – and locking them up would act as a big deterrent.”

He added: “This was such an enormous clean-up job that it’s cost us £20,000 of taxpayers’ money.

“We had to close roads off to get in there and take this terrible mess away.

“It took us three days to complete the task – taking up vital resources.

“But we were determined to cart all the rubbish away and leave the two sites as they were before they were so ruthlessly targeted.”

Cllr King said shocked staff are now hunting for vital clues to help them track down the brazen eco-criminals.

“We’ll be pulling out all the stops to catch those responsible.

“They obviously used lorries to drop off all this rubbish.

“This is criminal flytipping on an enormous industrial scale – a significant criminal enterprise.

“There’s every chance that those responsible came in from outside and dumped all this waste in the dead of night.

“We’ve even had flytipping gangs used fake number plates in the past.

“But our message is clear.

“We are not going to be used as a gigantic dumping ground here in Harborough,” he insisted.

“And I know that the decent people of Harborough are fully behind us.

“They are just as horrified as I am and the council is by horrible incidents such as these blighting our landscape and wrecking our countryside.”

Cllr King said they have installed bollards on both flytipping sites to prevent the gang striking again.

“We’ll also be watching with covert CCTV cameras.

“I’d urge people in Harborough to be very careful when hiring contractors to take away your waste,” he said.

“Make sure they are properly licensed and that they will dispose of your rubbish legally and responsibly.”

If you have any information about who may be to blame for this flytipping outrage then alert the council urgently at: www.harborough.gov.uk/tip-off