The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has criticized King Charles and the Duchy of Lancaster for not helping to clean up an illegal waste dump in Bickershaw, near Wigan, according to reports. The site reportedly contains over 25,000 tonnes of rubbish and was the scene of a large fire last July that burned for 10 days. The Duchy of Lancaster inherited about a third of the plot, partly owned by Wigan Council, through an ancient law that makes it the default inheritor of property when the owner dies without a will or relatives, and it is exempt from rules requiring property owners to clear illegal waste.
Channel 4 News reported that the Duchy had offered to give the land to the council, which would then be required to clear it. Local MP Josh Simons previously criticized the Environment Agency for taking responsibility for a similar clean-up in Oxfordshire while refusing to tackle the Bickershaw dump, and similar situations in Oxfordshire and Kent saw clean-up costs met by the UK Government, which manages the Duchy. The Environment Agency told the BBC it was doing everything in its powers to manage the site and identify perpetrators, with people interviewed under caution.
Why does this end up like this in the north but it gets cleaned up in the south? We can't have a country where people are treated in different ways, where people here somehow can be seen as second-class citizens.
Burnham said, 'Why does this end up like this in the north but it gets cleaned up in the south? ' The specific actions by King Charles or the Duchy regarding the dump remain unclear, as does the current status of the Environment Agency's investigation.
Well they're not and we won't accept that any community here is treated in that way and we call on the government to do exactly the same here as was done down south.