City Hall is coming under fire after a computer blunder saw it falsely claim that fly-tipping had dropped significantly over the last year. 

Council officers admitted that a "data processing issue" had led them to believe that instances of fly-tipping had fallen by 14pc from 2022 to 2023.

It was later revealed that fly-tipping had actually increased by 8pc in that time, with a total of 5,963 incidents last year. 

Questions are now being asked about how the £100,000 Love Norwich fund, designated to tackle the issue, is being spent.

Green Party councillor Jamie Osborn said: "The council has utterly failed to get a grip on the problem of fly-tipping which blights so many communities in the city.

"Far from getting better, fly-tipping in Norwich is only getting worse. It is an embarrassment.

"We have seen no evidence of this fund being spent effectively."

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The Love Norwich campaign launched in November 2022 and aims to tackle environmental anti-social behaviour through enforcement and improved facilities. 

As part of the scheme, tamper-proof commercial bin lids have been distributed, CCTV cameras have been installed to catch litter louts, and community events have been held in some of the worst-affected parts of the city for locals to discuss issues such as graffitiing. 

A data blunder by council officers led members to believe that instances of fly-tipping had dropped from 6,935 in 2022, to 5,963 in 2023. The figure for 2022 was later corrected to 5,520. 

Officers said this was due to several months of incidents being duplicated within the computer system, resulting in a "spike" in the data. 

"We saw this weird anomaly and discovered a data processing issue," they added. "We have removed this from our reports."