The damaged vehicle has been left abandoned in Hurn Court Lane for nearly a month, according to a local councillor.

Cllr Margaret Phipps, ward councillor for Hurn and portfolio holder for ‘managing our environment’, said she was made aware of it on March 5.

“It’s unbelievable someone would see fit to dump a caravan of tyres – you couldn’t make it up,” she said.

A notice from Dorset Waste Partnership was attached to the caravan on March 15, warning the owner the vehicle would be taken away if it had not been removed within seven days.

However, the caravan was still there when the Daily Echo visited the area yesterday.

It follows a number of other fly-tipping incidents in the Hurn area recently.

A large mass of cannabis was found dumped in Hurn Court Lane last month, alongside other waste, while in nearby Pig Shoot Lane what looked like a skipful of household items had been left by the river.

And Hurn parish councillor Ian Evens joined neighbours in Pitthouse Lane in clearing rubble and roof tiles which had been dumped in the middle of the road, blocking them in.

At a recent meeting of the Dorset Waste Partnership Joint Committee, Cllr Phipps asked how many fly-tipping incidents had been reported in the area so far this financial year, and how much it had cost to clear them up.

She was told there had been 2,349 fly-tips reported between April 2016 and the end of February 2017, with the total estimated clearance and disposal costs reaching £126,787.

Of these incidents, 233 were reported to the Christchurch depot and were cleared up at a cost of £11,611.

Cllr Phipps also asked officers if the number of fly-tipping incidents had increased since charges were introduced at household recycling centres in Dorset last September.

Although officers said they had not seen an increase that could be linked to the introduction of charges, they said they had experienced an increase in fly-tipping generally when compared to previous years. “But no spikes in the number of incidents from September that is any higher than the background increase in fly-tipping,” they added.