A HOTLINE which residents can use to dob in fly-tippers will be launched by the council on Monday (June 30).
It is part of the new Labour administration's Don't Mess with Croydon campaign, launched after it made cleaner streets and tougher action against fly-tippers a key plank of its election manifesto.
The dedicated hotline and e-mail address will complement the existing smartphone app, MyCroydon.
Residents who want to get actively involved in the campaign will also be encouraged to become 'community champions' and will be supported by Croydon's street cleaning contractors, Veolia, to carry out a series of community pride clean-ups.
Council staff and contractors, regardless of their job titles, will be asked to act as additional eyes and ears and will be given the means of quickly logging any problems they see while out on their normal duties.
The new hotline number, 020 8604 7000, becomes active on Monday and this, along with the email address flytipping@croydon.gov.uk, can be used to report fly-tips and provide information about who caused them.
The council says the information will be used to issue fines or seek court action against the perpetrators.
Councillor Stuart Collins, cabinet member for a cleaner and greener Croydon, said: "The volume of calls shows interest in reporting fly-tipping has been sky-rocketing recently and we want to capitalise on this to keep the reports coming in. Over just the last few weeks we've had approaching 1,500 reported incidents from across the borough. This is great, because the sooner we hear about a problem, the sooner we can investigate who might have been to blame, issue fines, and get it cleared up.
"These calls show how much pride people already have in Croydon – again, this is a brilliant starting point and we'll be doing everything possible to keep up the momentum.
"Of course the flip side of this is the picture it paints of the scale of the problem. In the long-term we have to stop people dumping rubbish in the first place. We'll be making it increasingly easy for people to get rid of their waste in the proper way - and for those who don't they can look forward to a significant cash fine or a court prosecution, and quite likely being publicly named and shamed."
