Town outrage as sacks of rubbish dumped by Oxfordshire wood

Bicester locals were furious after photos of the piled black sacks were shared on their local Facebook page, with one person calling it a “disgrace”.

The pictures from Sally Dunkley showed the rubbish at the end of a road that leads into Merton Wood.

The woodland was created in 2002, includes a variety of trees and is home to deer and hares.

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Responding to Ms Dunkley’s post, Shorif Uddin, whose name was featured on a ticket within the rubbish, apologised for the incident.

He added that responsibility for the action lay with a contractor his interior design company paid to dispose of the rubbish.

Mr Uddin said he has refurbished several restaurants in Bicester and often uses a skip, although when they were working on the Anika Indian Restaurant, they had to pile all of it at the front of the shop and pay for it to be taken away.

The pile of rubbish by a Bicester woodland has sparked anger (Image: Sally Dunkley)

He paid £600 for the service and said: “How the rubbish got there is beyond our control.”

The issue of fly-tipping is a particularly sensitive one in the Cherwell district after a 150-metre-long mountain of waste was dumped in a field alongside the A34 in Kidlington last year.

The Environment Agency previously declared a critical incident over the fly-tip, and work is underway to clean the site up.

There were over 80 comments in response to Ms Dunkley’s post about this smaller fly-tip with many people calling for those responsible to be fined.

Others called for the waste to be cleared up by those it belonged to.

The rubbish that was dumped by the Bicester woodland taken away in a van (Image: Shorif Uddin)

Following the social media post, the rubbish was removed by the team at Anika on Monday, April 6, although Mr Uddin was keen to stress it was nothing to do with them.

He said his interior design firm used a waste management company to take the rubbish away when they were refurbishing the Indian restaurant five months ago.

Mr Uddin added that he did not think all the rubbish came from that project.

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He said: “During the minor cosmetic work we did in Anika there was no major work such as plaster board or hard core it was all cosmetic and paint and decor work.

“But as you can see on the pile of rubbish there is hard core which doesn’t belong to us but as the rubbish has my name tag I kindly requested the restaurant to get hold of a van and get the rubbish removed and they were very kind to do this.”

Cherwell District Council has been approached for comment.