‘Council Leader should hang his head in shame’ over the state of his ward say Kensington businessman 

James Thornhill runs a stonemason's firm in Kensington, and he said he’s fed up with constant fly-tipping in the area. He believes that despite having two of the area’s three Labour councillors being in the cabinet, including the Leader Liam Robinson, they just don’t care about the community they represent. He says Labour are doing nothing to prevent fly-tipping like the ones pictured from being a daily occurrence. 

Mr Thornhill has been in contact with Cllr Carl Cashman over the state of the areas, and Liverpool Liberal Democrats have demanded a crackdown on ‘Organised Waste Crime’ as fly-tipping surges

Local Liberal Democrats have slammed the “complacency” of the current administration after shocking new figures revealed that industrial-scale fly-tipping is surging across Liverpool.

The latest annual statistics show around 52,000 incidents nationally were the size of a ‘tipper load lorry’ or larger - an 11% jump from 2023/24. These industrial-scale dumps are often the work of organised criminal gangs rather than petty littering.

Despite the scale of the crisis, both Labour and the Conservatives recently failed to support a Liberal Democrat amendment in the House of Lords that would have made serious waste crime a strategic priority for the National Crime Agency (NCA).

In Liverpool, the cost of clearing these illegal sites is falling on taxpayers, with local authorities across England forced to spend a staggering £19.3 million on clean-ups in the last year alone.

James Thornhill, local businessman, said,

“At the end of the day, areas like this just feel taken for granted by Labour. They just let this fly-tipping happen constantly; it’s just not good enough. There are some streets around here where the amount that gets dumped there is enough to furnish an entire house.

“What sort of message does it send to residents, the rest of the city and everyone else if this is what happens in the Leader’s own patch. Politics is about principles in action - and the principle in action here is ‘I don’t care’.

Cllr Carl Cashman, Leader of the Liverpool Liberal Democrats, said:

“Residents in Liverpool, including in the Leader’s own ward, are sick and tired of seeing our city treated like a dumping ground. These figures show that across the country, we are seeing the equivalent of 142 monster landfills every single day.

“If I were in Liam’s shoes, I’d make it my number one priority for my residents to deal with the fly-tipping they face on their doorstep. It’s not going to be fixed overnight or eliminated entirely, but we can deter it with tough action and enforcement. 

“From Otterspool Park to Walton, and the Waterfront to West Derby, our neighbourhoods are paying the price for the failure to tackle organised waste crime. It’s not just an eyesore - it’s an organised criminal enterprise that is poisoning our environment while local taxpayers are left to foot the bill.

“The complacency and failure of the Government and the Conservatives to support our plans to ensure the NCA treats serious waste crime as a strategic priority is shameful. They have gone soft on waste crime and must stop dragging their feet to protect our environment here in Liverpool.

“Serious waste crime should be a priority for the National Crime Agency, with the worst cases taken out of the Environment Agency’s hands and dealt with properly.”