THE increase in fly-tipping across Wiltshire is not linked to the reduction of opening hours of recycling centres, the chairman of a waste task group has said.

Councillor Jose Green presented the Waste Service Changes Task Group findings to the Environment Select Committee at Trowbridge County Hall on Tuesday following complaints about the changes from the public.

The reduced opening hours, which came into force last year to help the council save money, have been creating large tailbacks that have been affecting residents and businesses that live nearby.

"Wiltshire is not alone in having an issue with the disposal of waste and the issues leading on from that," Coun Green told the committee. "It has been a year since we started this and it has been quite protracted but very thorough and over nine meetings we found the letter H was key, meaning household."

During the discussions on Tuesday, councillors heard how household waste remained the biggest single material of fly-tips, with over 700 cases to date but that the sizes of these fly-tips indicated they were of a commercial nature and dumped by somebody offering a waste disposal service.

Coun Green said: "We went through the findings of fly-tipping to determine if it was a result of closure times. We are not convinced that it is and some of the tips and size of them point towards commercial waste. It is all about education and that is the bottom line and something we should not relent on."

As there have been significant changes to the way public can dispose of their waste, many councillors pushed for a circulation of an updated list of rules and regulations which include the fact that householders can be prosecuted for fly-tipping if their rubbish is dumped incorrectly by a commercial company.

A Freedom of Information request submitted by a Wiltshire newspaper has revealed that the tonnage recycled by HRC's has dropped in a number of places since the timing changes have taken place.

Overall, the tonnage recycled to date has dropped by 3.97 per cent, with the biggest difference in Salisbury where they have seen a 20.86 per cent decline and the task group acknowledged this decline and attributed it partly due to the long queues into the site which should be relocated.

The report, which received overwhelming support from the committee, will be ratified in the next cabinet meeting.