Sheffield dumpit sites have 'some of the shortest opening hours among core cities' amid calls to bring them into line with Leeds and Liverpool

Green Party councillor Paul Turpin, representative for Gleadless Valley, spoke on the issue during a recent meeting of Sheffield Council’s economic and environmental wellbeing scrutiny committee.

He said his life was now reporting queues at tips and fly tipping and in just the last two weeks he reported around 50 items of fly tipping, some of which had to be re-reported as it was missed by Amey.

One of the main causes he said was tips not meeting the needs of residents.

Seeing the problems worsen led him to compare Sheffield’s waste centres with other core cities by working out the amount of minutes per person, per year, from opening times.

He found Donaster had 2.76 minutes per person each year, Liverpool 2.1, Leeds 1.98, Greater Manchester 1.74 and Sheffield just 1.08.

He said for Sheffield to be in line with the other cities, it would need to open all centres for seven days a week with 10 hours in winter and 12 hours in summer.

At present, Sheffield’s tips are open for six hours a day and only one out of five is open seven days a week.

In the meeting, Coun Turpin urged the council to tackle issues around waste by not leaving any bins full, extending opening hours, creating a booking system for tips to prevent queues and accepting commercial waste at the tips.

Gillian Charters, head of waste management, said: “In terms of opening hours, 10 hours in the winter and 12 hours in the summer is not going to alleviate the pinchpoints we know we have on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

“The real issue we are dealing with at the moment is social distancing we have got on sites to protect employees and customers.

“As soon as we are able to sensibly lift that we will do so and that will provide some alleviation.

“Our sites are not as big as some of the other sites in other authorities. Therefore at the moment it’s not practical for us to implement a pay-as-you-go system. It’s something we would like to look at going forwards but that is a longer-term aspiration.

“In terms of a booking system, I think they actually limit access on site.

“What we can’t get away from here is people are choosing to act illegally when they fly tip. I know you are putting the onus on us as a service provider. It doesn’t mean to say it’s right people then decide they can’t be bothered and go and shove it in a side street. We shouldn’t be blaming the council for that, it’s down to the individuals.”

Earlier this week, Coun Turpin shared his anger at fly tipping in his ward, saying it was becoming the “dumping ground of south Sheffield”.

He described one particularly bad area, called The Lumb as “the sort of scene you see on TV when they are showing places in developing countries”.