HOUSEHOLDERS and business owners wishing to dump rubbish at South Gloucestershire’s recycling centres will have to prove their residency in the district.

Access to the area’s four Sort It centres is being tightened to stamp out use by people from outside of the area, a practice which stretches South Gloucestershire Council’s already strained waste budget.

Nine changes are to be implemented at the four sites in Yate, Thornbury, Stoke Gifford and Mangotsfield including the introduction of a pre-registration system for residents, meaning anyone who wants to take extra household rubbish to the tip will have to register the make and model of two cars per household with the council. An automatic number plate recognition system is already in use at the centres and people who have not pre-registered will be denied access.

To reduce the number of vans being used to deposit large amounts of rubbish at the sites, an electronic permit scheme for van drivers will be introduced limiting them to 12 visits a year. The council had proposed to ban any vans registered to a business but, following calls from Cllr Claire Young (Lib Dem, Wersterleigh) it will allow access to van owners who use the vehicle for their own business or who bring their van home from work for personal use.

Council waste manager Kristy Spindler said the amount of rubbish being taken to the tips had increased by 11 per cent in 2012-2013 to 35,009 tonnes in 2013-2014. This year the authority is expecting a further five per centre increase to 37,000 tonnes after seeing a 52 per cent increase in the amount of garden waste being brought to the sites after the council scrapped green bin collections last year.

At a meeting of the council’s communities committee on Wednesday (July 22) where the changes were agreed, Cllr Shirley Potts (Lab, Staple Hill) said: “Will there be an increase in flytipping?

“Presumably this will be monitored and I would like to see a report on the figures.”

Steve Evans, director of environment and community services, said: “We are very successful in prosecutions with flytipping and we will carry on with the same monitoring we are doing and compare the results year on year.”

Other changes to be made include the removal of extended summer opening hours so all four centres will close at 4.30pm instead of 6.30pm and open half an hour later at 8.30am instead of 8am.

It is estimated that the restrictions will deliver a 10 per cent reduction in tonnages, saving the authority £150,000.

The new restrictions, which will be phased in over a period of time, received the most public support in a consultation carried out between November 2014 and February 2015.