Went past the old portacabin site, whilst on the 185 today and noticed some caravans parked up in there. Some sign saying “We do gardens too” or similar words. Is this part of the proposed development plans or something not quite so planned? 
Probably travellers. Do they do block paving, too?
I walked past today. I could see people sitting in the caravans. It looks like a travellers site to me.
Lewisham Council will need to buy some more riverside nature conservation land…
It’s not a “travellers[’] site”, it’s an illegally-occupied piece of privately-owned land (as far as I know) that’s been invaded by squatters.
I wonder if they are connected to those who were at the Grove car park and the BT exchange in Dulwich the other week. They left an almighty mess with fly tipping before they were removed.
I walked along Firemans Alley when they were clearing up the BT exchange. A terrible mess. Openreach couldn’t even gain access to install new phone lines or for maintenance work.
Yep, just been past again and load of rubble, wood and other “rubbish clearance” already going on and messing up the place 
How did they get in? That place looked pretty secure…
There was also a caravan on Malham road for a while with huge mounds of rubbish all around thankfully now all cleared
I want to know that too.
The gate is closed.
if they are travellers and lewisham council is obliged to provide sites for travellers, maybe they can reach an agreement that they can stay until work begins on the site provided that there is no fly tipping or other problems?
When I went past yesterday a couple of blokes were digging up concrete around base of the big portacabin on there. There were a couple of caravans but I thought it was something to with redevelopment.
What sort of number plate is that? Also interesting that there are no contact details at all on the waste removal van - waste carriers have to be registered in England with a fine of up to £5k:
https://www.gov.uk/waste-carrier-or-broker-registration
I’d hope authorities would take an interest in at least this before they mess the place up.
It looks like a number plate from the Republic of Ireland. TN stands for Tipperary North.
Tipperary you say? That’s a bit ironic for a fly tipping business 
Hmmmm… now that I am at work and can take a proper look at the photo on a large screen, the number plate format doesn’t add up. I think the plate says “84-TN-3452”. That format of number plate was not used in Ireland until 1987. Also, a quick online check returns an error on the plate. So, either that isn’t an irish number plate or I cannot read the number right and 84 is wrong, maybe…
No, it’s an 84. Maybe they just got the wrong plate. Oh Dear!
Looks quite dodgy then, in fairness… I still want to know how they got that gate open, though…
Has anyone contacted the owners of the Portakabin site, I wonder?
Why would that be a red flag? It’s 31 years ago. Oh, wait, I see, the first two digits are wrong, as that would mean 1984.
Lets not judge, it may be a private plate 
Ireland doesn’t do private plates…
I was being sarcastic 
I gathered… 
I’m inclined to give them directions to somewhere else, with recommendation for sites. I hear Norfolk is nice.
We have some settled travellers round the corner from us, nice folk. As a result we dont see many travelling folk causing issues. In fact, we dont see any travellers. Make of that what you will.
Keep up, this is England, there is no enforcement.
Are you referring to Forest Hill or Norfolk?
Norfolk.
Indeed. And so it would seem registration only penalises the law abiding businesses, and locks only keep honest people out. 
In regard to this…
“Eleagally” lol
There’s currently 3 police cars parked up on Waldram Place. No idea if that is related to this.
Is that what the police was hovering over earlier too? Nothing on NPAS (yet):
Flytipping has begun in earnest I see…
What kind of life for that poor child wandering around
Ugh. That’s terrible - a huge heap of trash already. I’m not sure if the yellow bags are medical/bio wastes, but that would make it a lot more expensive to clean up too.
Next I predict they will torch the heap before finally leaving to create a problem somewhere else.
Cant ever work out why when Police/Bailiffs turn up eventually to evict these scumbags why they dont make them clear the $hite that they have dumped there ??
Have often passed this site and thought its ripe for a [mod redacted] but the Front electric gate looked pretty Hardware.
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Who is responsible for this land now?
I can’t believe the mess that’s being made there in such a short space of time.
Can’t even throw unwanted sunday roast potatoes in a bin! Just sling them out the window!!
You’d think if you broke into somewhere you weren’t meant to be, you’d try not to bring too much attention to yourself.
Keep Britain Tidy & Look after the environment and all that.
Seriously NO RESPECT such a shame, if they kept it tidy, and disposed of their rubbish clearance like most people have to do. It would still be illegal taking over land that doesn’t belong to you. But not as annoying to the public, when walking past daily & seeing the mess being made.
If it’s still owned by portacabin, maybe they can drop a large portacabin across the entrance and set up some security. That would stop any more junk being dumped, and if the portacabin were to be vandalised or damaged, that’s further criminal action to report.
Really though I don’t know why the police can’t take an interest and track the waste pickup and dumping. The photos in this thread a vague evidence taken casually from a passing bus. Surely the professional police force can easily do better with a little effort??
Then fine the travelers £5k for the flytipping, and take away the lorries and vans if they can’t pay. Also fine whoever is silly enough to be paying for this waste to be illegally removed. That’s another £5k.
Then put the money towards the tidy up.
It’s a shame @SgtBiddle doesn’t appear to read these forums anymore. I’d love to understand why more can’t be done, before the rubbish piles end up like this:
And that was on a prison site!!!
I walked past about an hour ago and it looks like the rubbish is already not far off those levels. Was shocked at how quickly it’s piling up in there.
I walked past today just as another lorry was driving in. It is not surprising the rubbish is piling up.
My fiancé just walked past and they’ve all gone.
Just left the rubbish & gate open.
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06.40 I walked past. Gate wide open. No caravans but several large piles of rubbish (including a washing machine) blowing around in the wind.
Trashed:
Oddly looks like they dug up the asphalt along the end of the portacabin office which is still there. Perhaps they were looking for electricity as there is a connector further down the portacabin. Or maybe they needed a waste run-off. Eitherway it looks like more unpunished criminal damage.
They would also need water.
Perhaps it would be useful if local authorities educated the public about why they shouldn’t accept offers of cheap rubbish clearance. If they saw photos of sites like this and saw how the rubbish is just dumped, they might think twice.
With flytips authorities will search for evidence of its source. If this is general waste I wonder if they can do the same here. Then they can ask for evidence a licensed operator was used. If above board I’m sure receipts were supplied.
Otherwise it’s flytipping by proxy.
And handing waste over to an unlicensed carrier can earn you upto a £5k fine also. If there was any enforcement, that is.
Does anyone know why the Police couldn’t have simply arrested them for trespass and fly-tipping over the weekend when there was clearly sufficient evidence of both offences? I really don’t understand the law on this - and while it’s some relief that they seem to have left the site, that’s tempered by the knowledge that they’ve simply moved on to another community where the fly-tipping will be repeated.
The police can only intervene if they can prove “aggravated trespass” - so this situation is usually considered a civil / council matter instead. The council must jump through many hoops including monitoring and documenting the situation of the travellers to satisfy the Human Rights Act 1998. So understandably, councils don’t have much appetite or spare bandwidth for this.
In Ireland the law is much stricter and empowers the police to act.
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Regarding flytipping, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious way to report a flytipping crime. I saw some guys in a van leave rubbish on my road and had a photo of the van. I reported it to the Council via their online form ‘report a flytip as crime’ but as far as I could tell it was just reporting a flytip, there was no way of reporting the vehicle. The rubbish was removed promptly by the Council so I can’t complain about that, but I do think unless people get fined for flytipping they will continue to do so.
I believe a lot of people have success with FixMyStreet, and that a lot of councils like Lewisham now rely on this for reports. There is a really handy app, and you submit photos with additional information. They’ll endeavour to keep you up to date on action as well.
But it was through this I also found out the council has limitations. There was a fairly substantial flytip on the stretch of Sunderland Road which is part of the South Circular. But it was on the private part of the shops/properties not on public land. So all the council could do was try to reach out to the property owner. It eventually went but under what circumstance I don’t know.
I presume the same issue will arise with the waste left behind at this site.
Yes I also reported it through Fix My Street and sent the photos and the rubbish was cleared fairly promptly by the Council. But will reporting it through Fix My Street just get the rubbish removed - do the fly tippers themselves face any consequence? Unless the fly tippers actually get fined they’ll carry on doing it. It was a waste removal company that left the waste on my street, so it’s pretty annoying that they are getting paid for removing rubbish, dumping it and the Council pick up the bill for actually disposing of it when Council budgets are already stretched to the limit.
Actually I don’t know. I have heard tell of council officials looking for clues to the source of the flytip. Some are stupid enough to include envelopes with names and addresses. And since 2016 councils can apply a fixed penalty notice without the need to go to the courts. If they do, they have to have some pretty solid evidence and witness statements which along with CCTV or photos can be helpful.
I guess it depends on whether the effort is worth the price. But as Lewisham spent over 1m in clearing up flytipping last year I would hope they would.
I doubt though anything would be recovered from the sorts who did this mess.
I doubt that the authorities can collect a fine if they don’t know where these people have gone.
Somehow I imagine the group will be quickly reported to authorities at their next stop. I don’t think they would be difficult to track down - if there was a will.
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The gate is now secured by a large chain and padlock.
It appears travellers have returned to the Girton Road car park in Sydenham.
I walked past the site yesterday lunchtime. There was a security van parked in the site, with another man taking photos of all the rubbish left.
I hope someone got photos of all the caravan numberplates so they can be traced in future.
The numberplate of the truck is included (in text) in one of the posts above. Now if someone Googles the numberplate they’ll be able to see this thread:
Reported gone within 24 hours.
Your surely not thinking any number plates on there vehicles or caravan will lead back to them ?
If they dont use cloned plates then they just make them up as they go along, the police cant even pick them out on ANPR cameras .
I meant that if anyone spots them in their next encampment, a google search will bring up this page.
They may, of course, ditch the numberplate every time they move.
From my earlier days I found out that on average around 200 tonnes of fly tip rubbish were collected by Lewisham every month.
To me this was a staggering amount of non respect for our environment. You would not do it in your house. Then again some people do and don’t see it as their problem.
The caravans had all gone, he was taking photos of the rubbish left.
Just spotted caravans in the car park outside the closed down Toys r Us in Lower Sydenham 
Who should it be reported to?
Could you post a photo please?
Sorry, not there now and never thought to take photos.
Were there any prosecutions?
Passing this morning it looks as if much of the rubbish has been cleared. There was also a branded Portacabin van and crew on site.
