Gamekeepers turned away from tips 

‘Commercial waste’ rule bites

Keepers giving up their weekends to clear visitor rubbish from Peak District moorland are being turned away from council tips because their vehicles are taxed as commercial, according to the Peak District Moorland Group.

Anything loaded into a commercially taxed vehicle is treated as trade waste regardless of where it was collected. One keeper in the High Peak arrived at Glossop Tip with bags of litter from public ground and was refused entry. Another exhausted his annual tip allowance clearing public land and was left with no outlet for his own household waste.

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Scale of the problem

The amount of rubbish is not trivial. A single organised litter pick along a three-mile stretch of moorland road filled three trucks in four hours, even though a separate group had already worked part of the same route that morning. Moscar Estate pays £1,300 a year for a commercial waste contract to dispose of rubbish from National Park land it did not produce. But not every estate can absorb that cost. 

Richard Bailey, coordinator of the Peak District Moorland Group, said visitor numbers were driving the problem. “It’s not just roadsides. Popular paths through woodlands and secluded moorland tracks all have their fair share [of litter] as well.”

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Council response questioned

Derbyshire County Council’s cabinet member for net zero and environment, Cllr Carol Wood, said recycling centres were not designed for litter collected this way and offered to explore whether existing highway litter arrangements might be extended to volunteers.

The Moorland Group said the offer did not address what its members were up against. “People doing unpaid public work shouldn’t be caught out by the same restrictions as commercial operators,” a spokesperson said.