A farmer whose land is one of the UK's worst fly-tipping hotspots is demanding harsher penalties for litter louts who plague the countryside.

In the last month, Will Oliver has removed tonnes of dumped waste from his fields including six old caravans, piles of broken furniture, toilets and baths and even bags of cannabis plants.

The 34-year-old, who part owns Swepstone Fields Farm near Heather, says fly-tipping is rife which has cost him thousands of pounds to clean up.

In a bid to highlight the problem, Will regularly posts videos and pictures of fly-tipping on TikTok which attracts thousands of followers.

He is now demanding the authorities crackdown on the criminals who use farmland as an easy place to dump rubbish and waste.

The dad-of-one said: "Fly-tipping has happened on the farm for at least the last five years and has got worse since Covid.

Fly-tipping is a real problem. Photo: SWNS

"We get all kinds of waste dumped on our land from builder's waste, bags of cannabis plants from cannabis farms and domestic rubbish.

"In the last few weeks we have had six caravans dumped in our fields and they are usually filled with rubbish or old tyres.

"The waste collection website said it costs around £1,000 to remove a caravan and when we clear a big pile of rubbish away ourselves it costs us anywhere from £300 to £500.

"I reckon in the last year we have spent £4,000 removing rubbish from our land.

"We can't claim this back on the insurance and it is effecting our business."

Will first noticed fly-tippers were targeting his poultry and arable farm five years ago when there were a couple of incidents a month.

Now he says people are dumping rubbish on his land every few days – with some brazen fly-tippers doing it in broad daylight.

Will runs the farm with wife Polly, 31, and their two-year-old daughter Ottilie.

The couple are now calling for the maximum £50,000 fine for fly-tipping offenders to be handed out more often.

Will, who is also a farming ambassador for Clean Up Britain, said: "We've got livestock on the farm and we have a busy job ourself trying to look after these animals and look after our farm without fly-tipping happening on a daily basis.

"It is not just the big piles of fly-tipping that we suffer with, people just litter constantly in the countryside and it has become normal to see rubbish everywhere we look.

"It's not a council issue as it is on our private land and if I was to move the fly-tipping to the side of the road, I would in a sense be fly-tipping myself.

"There is no pattern to the fly-tipping but if there are lots of piles of it on our land one day, people assume it is acceptable and then dump their stuff.

"It used to happen in the middle of the night, but now people do it in broad daylight.

The rubbish piles up. Photo: SWNS

"We have had to put in lots more gates on our land to stop the fly-tippers dumping their rubbish but this doesn't work.

"They are willing to jump over gates and cut padlocks so there is no stopping them.

"If people were fined for the fly-tipping and their crimes were published in the press, it might deter people from doing it.

"But this is not happening enough so people don't think they will be caught and are not scare to dump their rubbish on other people's land.

"People think a £50,000 fine is too much but we would easily spend this in a ten-year period removing the rubbish from our site.

"It's not just us that are suffering, neighbouring farms are having the same issues too.

"People have become careless now and just think dropping rubbish and fly-tipping is normal and this needs to stop.

"We need the fines to be taken seriously for the fly-tipping to stop."

Government figures show there were 1.09 million fly-tipping incidents in 2021 to 2022 compared with 980,000 in 2019 to 2020.

The worst year for fly-tipping was 2020 to 2021 which saw 1.14 million incidents recorded but this figure was skewed by the effect of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns.