No doubt this story in the Times will generate the standard response of criticism of councils.

This is normally along the lines of, we don’t collect the stuff often enough, we don’t collect the right stuff – or we charge for taking stuff away and of course, the tip isn’t open often enough.

As with every Council service, all this costs money to do and has to be paid for by every taxpayer, even if they don’t use that service.

People never seem to go straight to criticising the criminals, who actually do the tipping and blighting of the countryside, or streets.

Councils are calling for a more effective legal system to streamline prosecutions for fly-tipping, which latest figures show has reached an eight-year high.

There were more than a million fly-tipping cases over the past financial year but the number of prosecutions has halved since 2012. Cllr Martin Tett, the LGA’s Environment spokesman, said: “When they take offenders to court, councils need a faster and more effective legal system which means fly-tippers are given hard-hitting fines for more serious offences.

Clearing up fly-tipping is costing councils more than £57 million a year, money that could be spent on services like caring for the elderly, protecting children or tackling homelessness.

The Government has allowed us to apply fixed-penalty notices for small-scale fly-tipping and this is a big step in the right direction.” Cllr Tett also called for manufacturers to take more responsibility for taking back old products when they sell new ones.