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Angry residents in a stunning medieval city have said their streets are becoming a “junkyard” caused by fly-tipping problem that’s been “going on for years”.
Locals in Kemsing Gardens, Hales Place, in Canterbury, Kent, are so fed-up with the amount of rubbish they are considering leaving the historic cathedral city in the Garden of England altogether.
Canterbury is famous for its medieval streets and iconic place of worship, but away from the tourist trod centre dirty mattresses and building rubble are the sights you won’t see on any tourist trail.
It’s become so bad that Paul Babra wants to move away from his home of 30 years. Mr Babra told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “This is just becoming a junkyard. It’s been going on for many years now.
“Kemsing Gardens has just become like a dump yard for the people to come and just disappear.”
Mr Babra, who runs his own catering business, said things were getting worse and it was affected property prices.
He added: “We’ve been living here and we’ve seen the state of this neighbourhood getting worse. A few years back we had a valuation of our property done by a local estate agent, we were getting a good fair amount at that time nearly five or six years back.
“We recently got it valued by another reputable local estate agent, and the value has gone down very very much. We want to get out of this neighbourhood.”
Mr Babra explained that some of the garages are owned by locals and he himself has one, but that the ownership of many of the dilapidated ones is uncertain. Degrading sadly by the piles of rubbish are also several council signs warning against fly-tipping.
Responding to the plight of residents, Cllr Mel Dawkins (Lab), who represents the area on Canterbury City Council (CCC), said: “I quite often get emails about fly-tipping in that area especially, it’s been on my radar for a long time.
“I find it very sad that people feel that they have to fly-tip, the actual tip is not very far from the garages in question.”
A spokesman for CCC said the solution to the problem is “a complicated one”.
He said: “We sympathise with the plight of people living in Kemsing Gardens and have been working hard behind the scenes to find ways of helping them.
“The cause of this issue is simple – the fly-tippers taking advantage of derelict buildings on private land to dump their disgusting waste. But the solution is a complicated one.
“Preparations are underway to clear the land again. But this is expensive and comes at a huge cost to the council taxpayer. The danger is that the fly-tippers simply return to fill it again. We are doing all we can to hunt down the fly-tippers. When we catch them, we will push for the biggest possible punishment.
“It would not make sense to take on the derelict land ourselves – that would be time consuming and the council taxpayer would end up owning derelict land it cannot use but the council would be required to spend money on.”
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