Councillor vows ‘tougher line’ on litter and fly-tipping

Kieran Molloy, Local Democracy Reporter

The man in charge of keeping Cardiff’s streets clean has laid out his priorities and a “tougher line” against the city’s growing problem of litter and fly-tipping.

At a small office in Cardiff’s County Hall overlooking Splott, Cllr Ed Stubbs, the council’s cabinet member in charge of waste, street scene and environmental services, laid out his vision for making the people that blot Cardiff’s streets literally pay.

Cllr Stubbs is a passionate advocate against litter and fly-tipping in the city, an issue that is quickly taking a more prominent place in the minds of Cardiff residents.

He said: “It’s almost not high enough on the political agenda because its people’s lived experience for how they see the city, it’s really important for them.”

The councillor for Splott called this type of behaviour “completely unacceptable”.

He continued: “We’re talking about leaving litter around bins, we’re talking about presenting your waste on the wrong day, we’re talking about putting food waste in bin bags so seagulls split them open and it’s going across the street.

“We’re talking about businesses that don’t have the right waste transfer arrangements in place so it clutters up the streets – none of these things are acceptable.”

In his efforts to tackle the city’s waste problem, Cllr Stubbs has increased the number of council officers who are able to search waste for evidence to aid fines and prosecutions from only 12 to 80.

He issued a strong message to fly-tippers in the city: “We will seek to identify you and we will have absolutely no qualms in issuing fines because the vast majority of people are just sitting there sick of that sort of behaviour”.

In the past, the Liberal Democract Group leader at the council, Cllr Rodney Berman, took issue with the levels of litter in the city, saying: “Too much of the council’s day-to-day spending has been diverted to cover the cost of massively increased borrowing to fund big projects like building a new County Hall.”

However, the council denied these claims and said the funding source of projects like County Hall is entirely separate from frontline services like those dealing with waste.

Earlier this year, images emerged of piles of old furniture and household objects outside public litter bins in Grangetown.

In one case, a torn-up mattress was left outside a bin on Corporation Road and in another case a broken-up sofa was dumped next to a bin on Penarth Road.

Cllr Stubbs said Grangetown was one of the city wards with the most resources assigned to it, where daily street cleaning takes place.

However, the story of littering and fly-tipping is one that’s familiar to people all over Cardiff.

People in some wards claim the issue is worse now than it has been in years and their annoyance has been exacerbated by the local authority’s decision to remove some litter bins across the city.

A recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request by WalesOnline revealed that since 2023, 37 litter bins have been removed from Cardiff.

In response, Cllr Stubbs said that the removals were down to a combination of certain bins becoming magnets for fly-tipping, the bins being difficult to reach by waste collectors and bins being removed because other bins were placed nearby.

Some residents will take little comfort in this though as waste, bin bags and bits of furniture continue to pile up on street corners.

We asked Cllr Stubbs what his priorities are going forward in tackling with one of the biggest issues the city faces.

More fines and bigger fines

Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) are Cllr Stubbs’ preferred method of combating fly-tipping in the city because there is a lower bar of proof than other mechanisms and the money collected through the fine stays in the city.

However, he is not convinced that “the levels of the fines are adequate”.

Earlier this year, a FOI by the Local Democracy Reporting Service showed that between between January and April 2026, the council had handed out 240 fines for littering and fly-tipping.

Plasnewydd Ward was the biggest culprit at 55 fines, followed by Cathays (37) and Riverside (25).

In July 2026, legislation was passed in England to raise the maximum fine for fly-tipping to £5,000, a 400% increase from the previous maximum of £1,000.

In Wales, fixed penalty notices are capped at £400 – less than 10% of England’s new maximum.

He said: “I would like the Welsh Government to consider raising the amount of money that councils are allowed to fine people.

“I think the principle that we carry out this enforcement and we carry out this clean-up and that it’s funded as much as possible by the people that cause the problems is one that a lot of people would find attractive.”

The councillor talked about how some fly-tipping in the city is “driven by different levels of criminality”, particularly organised groups of people who promise to take unwanted larger items away for a small fee and just end up dumping it on street corners or around public litter bins.

He continued: “Andy Burnham has identified that a lot of this high-level stuff is quite serious organised crime.

“We need the police’s and Natural Resources Wales’ support to deal with that.

“I’d appeal to the Welsh Government as well to take a similar stance to the one Burnham has taken.”

Cllr Stubbs said he would like to make full use of the council’s power.

“If we can trace a vehicle that is involved in dumping rubbish on our streets, I’d like to be in position to see it seized.”

He also said that the requirements for a waste carrier licence should be higher, this licence allows a business to transport, buy, sell or dispose of commercial waste.

He said: “My assumption is that as part of that licence, you see evidence of the journey of what they do with their waste… that’s not the case, they haven’t got to demonstrate they’ve got a contract with a waste storage facility.”

The impact on businesses

Cllr Stubbs also revealed that the council has plans for “proactive” visits from waste and shared regulatory service (SRS) officers to businesses, with a particular emphasis on food businesses, across the city to make sure proper procedures are in place and businesses are putting out their bins when they’re supposed to, rather than storing waste on the street, adding “people don’t want to see that”.

He said: “We’ll be rolling out operations across the city to ensure everyone’s compliance, to ensure that when someone goes for a run, the first thing they see on a Sunday morning isn’t that sort of thing.”

“It’s about being proactive, making sure people have got arrangements in place to keep waste off the street.”

He said he expects these visits will result in more fines being issued, but added that it is “absolutely right” that the council ups enforcement and “that the people who dirty our streets make contributions.”

The Splott councillor made a point to mention that he is “incredibly grateful” for the work that community litter picking groups and individuals do and that there should be more done to celebrate them.

He added: “They’re not there to replace council services but they are there to improve their own communities”.

Reporting fly-tipping

Something that came up repeatedly during the interview was the importance of the council’s official app for reporting waste and fly-tipping on city streets.

One of the main functions of the app is that it allows people in the city to quickly report local issues like fly-tipping, graffiti, potholes and dirty streets.

Cllr Stubbs said: “It’s about giving us intelligence. I’ve talked about proactive visits but that is more effective when people share with us what they know and the best, quickest way to share things with the council is through the app.”

He stressed that some of the best work the council currently does to combat litter and fly-tipping in the city is based on intelligence collected through the app.

The cabinet member said that he hoped the people of Cardiff would feel the impact of his “tougher line” against waste in the city.

However, he added that it is yet to be seen if residents will see the results.

“What I am very clear in my mind of is that you would do well to meet anyone in Cardiff that doesn’t want us to take a tougher line.”

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.