Kent County Council is obliged by law to provide places for people to dispose of household waste free of charge.

Back in June 2019 the council took the view that items generated from building renovation such as plaster board and sinks, breeze blocks and rubble, were not household waste, even if generated as a result of the householder doing the work himself, as opposed to using a building contractor, and introduce a system of charges for such items across its 18 household waste re-cycling centres.

The council now charges £4 per sack for items such as breeze blocks, bricks, cement, concrete, drain pipes, ceramic bathroom and kitchen items .

Plasterboard is charged at £6 a bag.

Critics suggested at the time the imposition of charges would simply lead to more fly-tipping.

Certainly there have been plenty of incidents of fly-tipping since.

In February, a pile appeared in Spout Lane, Horsmonden.

In Frittenden, a pile of rubbish dumped in Staplehurst Road that was so tall that Frittenden Parish Councillor Lester Gosbee could hardly see over the top.

Of course, these instances are only anecdotal evidence - there were always instances of fly-tipping even before the charges were introduced from those people simply too lazy to drive to the tip.

But now one Tunbridge Wells resident, who asked not to be named, has used a Freedom of Information request to obtain some interesting statistics about the collection of such materials at the North Farm Household Waste Re-cycling Centre in Tunbridge Wells.

He asked for the amount of plasterboard and the amount of soil, rubble and hardcore collected at the site during August 2018 - before the charges were introduced, and again in August 2019, after the charges.

The figures show 20.24 tonnes of plasterboard were collected in 2018 and 240.19 tonnes of soil and rubble.

In 2019, the figures had fallen to 7.46 tonnes and 48.94 tonnes respectively.

As he said, if August 2018 was just a regular month, where have the other 12.78 tonnes of plasterboard and 191.25 tonnes of building rubble gone?

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