Farmer slapped with £40k fine after fly-tippers dumped waste on his land is 'delighted' as fundraiser raises £30k

Having recently lost his wife, the farmer discovered the dumped mess on a field edge being used as part of a government scheme to grow wild bird food.

After the council failed to identify the criminals responsible, it fell to the farmer to cover the cost of removing the rubbish, which contains medical waste and sheets of what is thought to be asbestos.

Less than a day after the fundraising appeal was launched, almost 1,000 people donated more than £30,000 to help the farmer burdened to cover the cost alone.

Archie Ford, 31, who created the fundraising page, said: “I’ve been absolutely staggered and humbled by people’s generosity. It’s been utterly inspiring.

"A lot of the comments left by those donating are in the same kind of vein, of how unfair it is and how angry it makes them. People are seeing an uptick in how often this is happening around them".

William Dickinson, a neighbouring farmer, said the 80-year-old widower and his family were “delighted by the outpouring of sympathy for his plight”.

“They are quite amazed by the public reaction, but it doesn’t remove the injustice of the whole thing and I hope it acts as a clear signal to the government that this situation is ridiculous.

"How can you have a law which absolutely and innately implicates the victim of crime as the person who then has to pay to put it right?

“It’s one of those anachronisms that has bubbled along for too long and the government has gotten away with it because, until recently, incidents have not had a life-changing impact, but as organised crime has got involved the severity of the impact will get massively worse.

“Organised crime do things in large numbers, rather than the occasional little man in a van who can’t be bothered to go to a tip".

Chris Edwards, who donated £20 to the farmer, wrote on the fundraising page: “I live in a rural community and fly-tipping is a constant problem. Hopefully the law can be changed so that it is the criminal, and not the landowner, that gets punished.”

A fellow farmer, who wished to remain anonymous, donated £400, while Phil Isbill, who donated £10, added: “As a cyclist, I see lots of fly-tipping around Hertfordshire and am shocked at the lack of council help as soon as rubbish is dumped ‘on private land’. Good luck with the appeal.”

Louis, who donated £10, commented: “We shouldn’t have to live like this. We are paying more taxes than ever to literally live in a toxic rubbish dump.”

The Hertfordshire farmer is threatened with prosecution by the local council if he does not remove the waste, which was discovered in July last year.

Local councils and the Environment Agency are primary investigators of fly-tipping in the UK, not the police -who only get involved if it involves intimidation or organised criminal activity.

In 2024, there were 1,152,617 fly-tipping incidents in England, a 6.3 per cent increase on the previous year, and only 1,598 of which were prosecuted by the police - an average prosecution rate of 1 in 1,000.

Robert Law, chairman of the National farmers Union (NFU) Hertfordshire branch, said fly-tipping was “out of control”.

“We are regularly seeing industrial scale fly-tips being carried out by organised criminal gangs,” he said.

“This devastates the countryside, damages the environment, and is costing the industry tens of millions of pounds in clear-up costs, with individual farmers left with bills of thousands of pounds to clear rubbish left of their farms, despite being the victims of the crime.”

The NFU is calling for councils and other authorities to work closely together to secure more arrests and convictions, and for penalties to be more proportionate, reflecting the impact of the crime.

Legitimate waste-management companies charge up to £450 per tonne of commercial, non-recyclable rubbish, which they collect from the customer.

Criminal gangs offer a discounted rate to remove waste, often no lower than 20 per cent of the market rate to avoid suspicion, according to the Environmental Services Association.

Gangs take the waste to their own facility for processing - often as rudimentary as a concealed shredder in a barn - before dumping it illegally on private land.

Those disposing of their waste may be unaware that they are handing business to an illegitimate company.