Why it’s important to carefully pick your skip hire provider

29th Sep, 2020

When you’ve got any kind of substantial waste on your premises, it’s understandable that you’d want to hire a skip and get it gone, ASAP. For some people, as long as they get the best prices they’re not particularly fussed about which company actually takes the waste, as long as it goes.

But trust us when we say that when you’re looking for the best prices, it’s also worth taking a bit of extra time to carefully check the credentials of who actually takes your waste. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to fall afoul of unscrupulous outfits who will simply dump your waste in the nearest open space, and might even implicate you as they do so.

With a long history in the waste disposal industry ourselves here at Skip Hire Network, we know that stories like this are becoming all too common in recent years. So why is fly tipping becoming such a big problem, and what can you do to protect yourself?

Fly tipping is on the rise in large cities across the UK

Fly tipping has always been a problem in Britain, and recent statistics indicate that the issue could be getting worse. Large scale fly tipping has more than doubled in six years, and since 2012, local council authorities have been forced to fork out a total of around £60 million to tackle the problem. In fact, it’s estimated to cost the UK economy ten times this much every year – about £600 million annually.

In the last year or so alone it’s cost UK councils £12.8m to clear up over 36,000 large tips, and 2018/2019 marked the first time that more than one million incidents have been reported in England in a decade. Parts of Manchester and London are notably struggling the most with the issue, and Manchester City Council averaged around 1672 cleanups annually in about five years.

Now, it’s worth noting that there might be other factors in play with these statistics – the council itself said that many of these figures relate to reports rather than actual offences. What’s more, there’s some concern that certain incidents may have been double counted, further skewing the figures.

Despite this though, the rise is certainly substantial enough to indicate that fly tipping is still a very persistent crisis. And it’s not just ad-hoc dumping, either. Fly tipping is increasingly being carried out on steadily larger scales by organised criminal gangs for profit, to the extent that an official from the Environment Agency has described fly tipping crime as ‘the new narcotics’.

How do fly tipping gangs operate?

Gangs typically pose as legitimate waste disposal businesses online in order to lure in their clients. Once they have a booking, most will pick up the waste and then drive it out to an open space and simply dump it. For bigger jobs, some will go a step further by using lock cutting tools to break onto private land – often large agricultural spaces – and dump huge amounts of waste that can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to clear.

Alternatively, they might try an even bolder approach, hiring out warehouses or barns directly from landowners. Then, they’ll dump the waste and then disappear. In one particularly shocking case from earlier this year, one unlucky landowner found themselves facing a personal bill of around £1 million to get rid of five tonnes of waste that was dumped in their warehouse by a supposedly legitimate company.

The consequences of this type of crime also has a variety of wider repercussions – organised gangs known to profit from fly tipping often have links to slavery, drugs and firearms. It’s a big part of the reason why UK authorities are clamping down increasingly hard not just on the gangs themselves, but also anyone who could be enabling them, however unwittingly.

In 2019, local authorities were given the power to issue penalties to homeowners who use unlicensed carriers, knowingly or not. If waste they pass to an unlicensed carrier is later found to be fly tipped, they can face a fine of up to £400. So when you come to hire a skip, while you’re looking for the best prices, don’t forget to check the credentials of your skip hire company too!

Why you can trust us at Skip Hire Network

Here at Skip Hire Network, our mission is to provide you with not just the best price when you hire a skip, but also the greenest way to recycle your waste. We recycle as much as we possibly can from everything you put into your skip, and our partners are carefully vetted, with up to a 100% recycle rate. In fact, our ultimate aim is to guarantee a 100% recycle rate of all the waste that we receive, and we’re steadily working towards that goal!

We know that trustworthiness is important when you come to hire a skip, so it’s worth taking a look at our reviews on Trustpilot from previous happy customers, so you’ve got complete peace of mind!

And of course, Skip Hire Network operates under the umbrella of the wider Recycling Lives Group, an award-winning UK organisation which has earned widespread praise for its work in helping vulnerable and formerly homeless people in the North West to get into permanent employment.

You can read more about our links to Recycling Lives (and other reasons to choose us) here, or if you’re all set to hire a skip, head straight over to our homepage to enter your postcode and get an instant online quote!