UK town is fly-tipping hotspot riddled with junk, rampaging rats and human waste

Raging locals in a town near Manchester have been left spitting feathers by the grim fly-tipping spot behind their houses.

Residents of Manchester Road in Bury have been trying to sell their homes, but it keeps falling through because of the informal dump.

Emma Simms has been trying to move for two years.

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She told the Manchester Evening News: “There’s rats that eat the rubbish, there’s been human waste found, furniture that’s been left – like toilets – and it’s even been set on fire.’’

She’s been trying to get rid of it but has run into problems over whose responsibility it actually is.

‘’The council were claiming it wasn’t their responsibility because they don’t own the land.

"But we went to our local MP and he said ‘it is actually your [the councils] responsibility’,” she said.

She said the rubbish was collected within two weeks of contacting MP James Daly.

Cases of fly-tipping in the area have skyrocketed in recent years with numbers up from 3,308 reports to 3,323.

Rubbish is being dumped both on public and private land and residents are growing weary of the situation.

The council has promised to tackle the issue, however it is reported that that the problem is persisting.

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The leader of Radcliffe Litter Pickers, Gill Smith, spoke to the MEN about some of the things she'd found during her picks: “The things we find the most is cannabis farms. We can find hundreds of plant pots.

“The compost we empty out and it gets spread out so it’s kind of recycled. That’s if it’s in a place it can be.’’

She and her volunteers have been helping with the clean up, saying there’s too much work to be done for the council to sort the issue out overnight.

“The council, can’t pick everything up at once, there’s too much… We work together and we’ll clear what’s left behind.”

She added: “We don’t look through it [the rubbish] because it can tamper with evidence, and we work closely with Bury Council’s enforcement team who do a really good job. They go and investigate it… and see if there’s anything there that can be used for prosecution.’’

For residents like Emma, the situation has come at a substantial cost: “We had to reduce the price of the house because no one will buy it and then the estate agent has asked us to lower it again”.

“Also, because we moved out of the property two years ago, we now have to pay double council tax.’’

In a statement Councillor Alan Quinn, cabinet member for environment at Bury Council, said the authority had worked repeatedly to try and solve the problem but that fly-tipping on private land is not the council's responsibility.

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