A young couple from Lincolnshire have been hit with a £1,200 fine after thieves stole their bin bag and dumped it just 30 feet from their home.
Abigail Swinn, 24, and Travis Raggo, 25, were each fined £600 by Boston Borough Council after enforcement officers traced the fly-tipped waste back to them through letters found in the rubbish.
The couple had left the bags out for regular collection when the incident occurred.
According to Swinn, the couple had left two bags containing domestic waste and old clothes for collection.
Boston Borough Council enforcement officers traced the fly-tipped waste (not pictured) back to the couple
Google Street View/Wikimedia Commons
Thieves targeted one of the bags, tearing it open to steal the clothes before discarding the remaining rubbish nearby.
Days later, a council enforcement officer visited their property after finding identifying documents in the dumped waste.
The incident has left Swinn, who has a three-year-old daughter Lexi, worried about affording Christmas due to the substantial fine.
“It’s ridiculous to think we would fly tip outside our own home when it was bin day,” said the nursery worker.
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Enforcement officers discovered letters in the trash with their name on them
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“I’d even checked on the council website which stated you can leave up to four bin bags out with your bin,” Abigail added.
The couple had been renovating their bedroom and had taken several bags of rubbish to the tip themselves.
They could only fit nine bags in their car, so left the remaining two bags out with their bins on Monday, October 28, ahead of Wednesday’s collection.
Two days after leaving the bags out, the couple were each handed a fixed penalty notice.
The council even posted a picture of one of their bin bags on Facebook in an attempt to shame them.
“We’d just thought the bins had been collected but one day an enforcement officer knocked on our door and accused us of fly tipping,” Swinn said.
She suspects the theft was deliberate, noting that a man had been photographed stealing bin bags in the area the day before.
Swinn has reported the theft to Lincolnshire Police, who confirmed receiving a report of anti-social behaviour.
“We haven’t paid the fines and I’m trying to ask the council to cancel them because it is just not fair. We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said.
The couple face a difficult decision about whether to pay the fine.
Local authorities carried out 532,000 enforcement actions against fly-tippers last year PA
“We might have to pay up though because if we lost any court case we’d face a criminal conviction or up to a £50,000 fine. We can’t risk doing that, we don’t want a criminal conviction.”
Boston Borough Council has taken a firm stance on fly-tipping, with the ability to issue fixed penalty notices of up to £1,000.
The council issued 237 fixed penalty notices in a 12-month period as part of their July pledge to “eradicate” the problem.
A council spokesperson said: “We take allegations of environmental crime offences very seriously as it impacts the cleanliness and safety of our community.”
“If a member of the public contacts us regarding a fixed penalty notice, we are committed to reviewing the circumstances around each case.”
