Three quiet streets in Burngreave, North Sheffield, converge onto a small park. Here, lying just above the city centre, in front of their rows of houses, children cycle with friends, families talk with neighbours on front-door steps, and elderly couples walk hand-in-hand to and from local shops. But even on bright days like this, people avoid the park.

Their shared, community park is a persistent eye-sore; plagued by fly-tipping. Coated in litter at its clearer points and mounded with features of black plastic and brown cardboard at its worst; many areas are inhabited by piles of discarded, fly-tipped rubbish occupying the park’s lay-bys, bushes, and trees.

Opposite the brand new NHS Spital Lane Health Centre, the people living on these three streets on the southern tip of Burngreave are reported in the media as being the “most targeted” for fly-tipping. While full of people during the day, by night the area is exploited by fly-tippers using their parkland as a dumping ground.

If there was a camera, a big camera, they wouldn’t come – my little camera does not stop them for long.

As reported by the Sheffield Star, from their 2024 Freedom of Information request to the Sheffield City Council, the statistics two years ago are as follows:

Verdon Street, Burngreave, 90 fly-tipping incidents in 2024

Spital Lane, Burngreave, 102 fly-tipping incidents in 2024

Brunswick Road, Burngreave, 147 fly-tipping incidents in 2024 – the highest of any street in Sheffield

The Star’s article, screenshotting the streets from Google Street View to put a face to the streets and the crimes committed, gives the impression it is the streets themselves, and the residents on them, who are breaking Sheffield’s fly-tipping records. Only when walking the streets is it realised the residents are the ones suffering.

Parts of the streets used by the residents – the paths, pavements, and roadways – were clean. Bin bags tied to street fences, likely put up by the Sheffield City Council, were all full and being used. People were not seen littering, and excessive rubbish was not seen on the street. What was seen, however, were people avoiding the park at the end of their road.

Across the park, under a growing pillar of smoke, a man was hunched over a small fire.

Ali, who has lived on Verdon Street for two years, spoke to me about living with the rubbish-filled park at the end of his street.

Ali is likely one of the few people who still use and enjoy the park. Sitting in a plastic garden chair, he looked out across the view of the city centre from the edge of the parkland: “I come here on Sundays to sit and look at the view. Sometimes I make a barbeque; sometimes I just burn the rubbish. I like to keep my area clean.”

He had just phoned his friend to come and join him. “See that pile?” Pointing to the area across from him, “I will burn that next. It wasn’t there yesterday. I think they come in the night.” When asked how the rubbish is dumped, he said: “Look, there, there”, pointing to the white van parked on the opposite side of the park, by the fly-tipped pile our reporters first found. “They always dump it there.” He said it has always been like this in the park for the two years he has lived on Verdon Street.

With no obvious signs of CCTV, or even posters and signs warning of punishment, the park – its sole purpose to unite the three streets together; a place for the residents to use and enjoy – unites them only under the subjugating title of Sheffield’s “most targeted streets”.

The more than a decade of fly-tipping in and around the park connecting these three streets will likely only worsen. The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA)’s publishing of the ‘Fly-tipping statistics for England, 2024 to 2025’ on 25 February has revealed that, nationally, fly-tipping incidents have increased by 9% from 1.153 million in 2023/24, to 1.258 million in 2024/25. Meanwhile, the number of fines handed down from courts decreased by 9% from 1,378 in 2023/24 to 1,250 in 2024/25 – meaning merely 0.2% of fly-tipping incidents result in court action.

‘Total number of fly-tipping incidents in England, 2018/19 to 2024/25’

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

Enforcement Action Type	2023/24	2024/25	% Change	% of Total Actions (2024/25)
Investigations	353,000	386,000	+10%	68%
Warning letters	—	62,000	—	11%
Duty of care inspections	27,000	29,000	+9%	5%
Statutory notices	24,000	21,000	−10%	4%
Total enforcement actions	530,000	572,000	+8%	100%

‘Fly-tipping enforcement actions in England, 2018/19 to 2024/25’

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

In their report, DEFRA states: “Fly-tipping is a crime, a significant blight on local communities and a source of environmental harm. Local authorities have a duty to clear fly-tipped material from relevant land in their areas and consequently they deal with the vast majority of fly-tipping on public land.”

This is something we all know. However, something we should not ignore is when Councils fulfil this “duty to clear fly-tipped material from relevant land in their areas”, but do not effectively target, deter, and prevent the “significant blight on local communities” caused when specific areas are repeatedly used as fly-tipping hotspots – especially if for over a decade, as in the case of South Burngreave’s park.

Map: The locations and findings of our investigation

As Sheffield Wire prepared to leave, a man with a shopping bag stopped at the largest pile of fly-tipped rubbish; the one Ali had pointed to across the park – pictured in the image below, and referenced as ‘A’ in the image above. The man threw his hands at it in a gesture of irritation and annoyance. Our reporter stopped, went over, and spoke to him.

Abdullah, who walks through the park often, revealed that only last week he had stopped a van from dumping on this exact spot: “I had my camera, and went up to them saying “look! Stop what you are doing” – they drove off; nothing was dumped,” he said, “But now, look, it’s all here.”

When asked if he knew who had dumped it, Abdullah said: “They must come from a shop or something, far away from here. Maybe, look at it and there will be an address.” He turned over a cardboard box, previously housing a TV, and a couple of black bags, rattling as if they were filled with bottles or shards of glass.

But there was no address; nothing to identify the perpetrator – it is likely the first thing criminals with experience in the crime remove before fly-tipping their waste.

He believes it is the fact there is no CCTV in the area that is causing the issue: “If there was a camera, a big camera, they wouldn’t come – my little camera does not stop them for long.” There was not a single sign to deter fly-tipping or warning of prosecution, and there was no obvious CCTV presence in the park or on the surrounding streets to capture and record criminals in the act.

Source: Google Street View combined with image by Author

To understand the Council’s position, their ‘Sheffield Fly Tipping Reduction Strategy 2025-2026’ includes details of educational and awareness plans to combat fly-tipping, the awareness they have for existing hotspots, and their deterrent and preventative tactics to address them:

• “Site specific target hardening solutions eg. fencing, CCTV, road closures etc to prevent incidents.”
• “Additional CCTV units were purchased to ensure where there were hotspots which would benefit from surveillance”

The strategy continues: “Sheffield city council has a small enforcement team of officers who investigate incidents of fly tipping. A large part of their work is reactive dealing with service requests from members of the public, internal and external partner agencies/departments. Our core approach when dealing with complaints is to identify if there is any evidence and then undertake a criminal investigation.”

The glaring issue is: these hotspot tactics were not in place around Sheffield’s “most targeted street”: Brunswick Road, nor Spital Lane or Verdon Street. There was no fencing, no CCTV, and no road closures on any of these streets. The only work seen in the area was on the smaller, Handley Street, off Spital Street, where a previous fly-tipping hotspot had been fenced off; pushing a new hotspot just under the fluorescent yellow warning signs posted on the plywood wall.

Neither here nor at any other of the fly-tipping sites was there evidence of these “additional CCTV units” – visible or sign-posted. Perhaps it has been decided that Sheffield’s most fly-tipped street would not “benefit from surveillance”? If the small, reactive enforcement team are looking to conduct evidenced-based investigations into fly-tipping around the park area of Brunswick Road – where there is no clear CCTV coverage – it is no wonder that, nationally, the level of court action taken against fly-tipping incidents is at 0.2%.

Several Sheffield City Council representatives, including Councillor Safiya Saeed, the Sheffield Lord Mayor and a representative for Burngreave Ward, along with executives heading the Council’s environmental and development teams, were contacted for comment. They were asked about the Council’s commitments for the streets of Spital Lane, Brunswick Road, and Verdon Street under the ‘Sheffield Fly Tipping Reduction Strategy 2025-2026’, and the Sheffield Wire put to them comments received from residents regarding night-time fly-tipping and lack of CCTV coverage in the area.

Sheffield Wire received only one response, from Councillor Mark Rusling, who said: “A lot of work is going into the Burngreave area to clear up and prevent fly tipping.”

Though, it is clear more will need to be said, and more will need to be done.