Canterbury resident furious as estate becomes hotspot for illegal waste

KentOnline / KMTV

Flytipping on a housing estate in Canterbury is becoming so common that some areas are being treated as a junk yard.   That is according to a resident in Hales Place who says the state of nearby garages makes him want to move away.   Gabriel Morris reports.

Transcript

00:00Paul's lived in this housing estate in Canterbury for some 30 years, his property coming with

00:06one of these garages. But he says fly-tipping is getting worse and worse in Kemsing Gardens.

00:11This is just becoming a junk yard or a tipping yard, you know. It is very, very disappointing.

00:18He's so fed up he wants to leave Hale's place, but says waste is stopping him from doing

00:23that.

00:24A few years back, we had the valuation done by our property, by a local estate agent,

00:30and we were getting a good fair amount. We got it recently valued by another reputable

00:36local estate agent, and the value has gone down very, very much. And they clearly identified

00:41that because of the state of the neighbourhood, Kemsing Gardens, Canterbury, is the big issue.

00:51He came here around a month ago, and this is what it looked like then. Today, more rubbish,

00:56little cleared. Part of the issue is that these garages are privately owned, with the

01:02council saying fly-tippers are taking advantage of this derelict land.

01:06It's just, it has been a really, really massive headache, the whole thing. And as I've said

01:14again before, there's just so much complexity to it to get to find a solution. But we are

01:18working our way through it, and that's all I can say really.

01:22Personally, I brought this issue back to the local authorities, and they very clearly came

01:27and put the CCTV cameras here, but unfortunately those cameras, they did not work, and they

01:35have been removed now for some time.

01:37Canterbury City Council told us they sympathise with the plight of people living in Kemsing

01:41Gardens, and have been working hard to find a solution, but preparations are underway

01:46to clear the land. They'd say it's expensive, but if they catch any future fly-tippers they'll

01:51be hit with the biggest possible punishment. With the amount of fly-tipping increasing

01:55and little being removed, and he says if he had the money, he'd clear it himself, or take

02:01legal action.

02:02Gabriel Morris, in Canterbury.

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