COMMUNITY clean-up group Pride in Pill (PiP) capped another successful year with one final litter pick, in Pill Park, on Saturday.

The coronavirus pandemic has failed to stop the PiP volunteers, who have completed 100 days of clean-up events across Newport in 2020.

But this year has also brought a change in the relationship between the group and Newport City Council, which removes the waste PiP collects and bags up.

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PiP chairman Paul Murphy said the council had asked the group to stop cleaning up fly-tipped waste and focus their efforts on litter.

"It would make much more sense if we could collect both," Mr Murphy said. "We can do this for free – if the council has to deal with the fly tipping by itself instead of us working together, it costs them much more. Why they’re turning down a free service, we don’t know."

In response to Mr Murphy's concerns, the council said the removal of fly-tipping by community groups "may interfere with the course of any investigations we carry out into the most serious fly-tipping cases".

The council said problems could also arise if fly-tipped waste was removed from private land and left on the public highway for collection.

The cost of removing fly-tipping on private land is the responsibility of the landowner, not the taxpayer, the council added.

On a positive note, the group said it had found far fewer syringes in 2020. The group collected 15 used needles in Pill this year, compared to more than 1,000 in 2019.