Kent Life in Maidstone, Kent, has been hit several times by what appears to be the same “offender”, who has left behind garden waste, pallets, and wood chippings.
Rob Bracken, the manager of Kent Life, expressed his frustration, noting that while fly-tipping has been a sporadic issue over the years, there’s been a significant increase with this latest spate of incidents.
He suspects a single individual is behind these acts, someone who seems “hell bent on causing us a problem”.
Rob explained the challenges they face: “Because our car park’s quite big and it’s open in the daytime, we don’t police it, you can quite easily get in and out.”
He recounted: “A few months ago, one guy in particular just came and started throwing all his stuff out of the back of his car into our car park and then just drove off at a high speed.”
Rob condemned the actions as not only lazy but also antisocial, stressing that such behaviour effectively steals resources from the animals cared for at the farm.
The recent fly-tipping episodes have included a pile of wood chippings, six pallets, and five bags of garden waste, costing the business around £300 to dispose of, according to Rob.
He complained: “There is a lot of garden waste this time, and we have to burn that – we don’t send that off so we’re having to take that to a separate place to get rid of it in a different way.
“We can’t dump it – we’ve got to then start putting it onto our tractor and driving it to the bottom of the site and unpacking it, but we shouldn’t be doing that.”
He added: “To be honest, it’s turned into almost like a Victor Meldrew where I think what is being thrown next?”.
Kent Life, a 28-acre site owned by the charity Cobtree Trust, offers various family-friendly attractions, including a farm, nature trail, shops, eateries, and a play barn. Despite reporting the issue to Maidstone council, the site being private land limits the council’s ability to assist.
Rob stressed: “Throwing your rubbish out is illegal – we’ve already put lots of signs around, and we do it on a constant basis.
“If I catch the guy, I’ll be pushing the full weight of the law to make sure that they don’t do it again,” he warned.
Kent Life faces not only fly-tipping but also ongoing issues with litter and anti-social behaviour.
The manager said: “There’s a lot of rubbish that builds up outside our site that we clean.
“People park there, throw all the cans of pop out the car, and sweet wrappers and stuff, so there is quite a bit of a littering problem around where we are.
“It’s like, for goodness sake, when’s it going to stop?”.