Toxic dump becomes election flashpoint in Makerfield byelection

Behind a metal fence on Bolton House Road in Bickershaw sits a mountain of rubbish that has not moved in more than twenty months. Twenty-five thousand tonnes of household and trade waste—one of the largest illegal dumps in the country—occupies a residential street, metres from a primary school where children once played in fields now shadowed by the pile. In the summer of 2025, the dump caught fire and burned for nine days. The school closed. Residents sealed themselves indoors to escape the fumes.

The waste arrived in October 2024 when lorries began appearing on the street. By January, twenty or thirty trucks were coming daily. Criminal gangs had found a profitable trade: divert rubbish away from legitimate landfills, pocket the £130.75-per-tonne tax that should have gone to the government, and leave the neighbourhood to absorb the cost. The economics are staggering. Waste crime costs the British economy roughly a billion pounds annually in cleanup, lost legitimate business, and evaded taxes. The gangs make millions. The people of Bickershaw live with rats in their homes and cars, with a smell that shifts seasonally from methane-sharp to rotting-flesh thick, with children too sick to stay in their own houses.

Nicha Rowson, a beautician who lives a few doors from the dump, has watched her youngest son spend five or six nights a week at his grandmother's place because the smell makes him ill. She points to what happened in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, when a similar illegal dump was discovered last year. Within weeks, after parliamentary pressure, the Environment Agency announced it would spend millions clearing that site—a departure from its usual practice of forcing landowners and criminal enterprises to pay. The Oxfordshire dump is being removed. The Bickershaw dump remains. "If you look at the Oxfordshire one, that got agreed to be tidied up relatively quickly," Rowson said. "Well, this has already been on fire, for nine days, so it's a north and south divide yet again."

As the Makerfield byelection approaches on June 18th, the dump has become the measure by which residents judge the candidates' promises. The outgoing Labour MP, Josh Simons, campaigned publicly to have it cleared. Earlier this year, the government announced the Environment Agency would remove it at taxpayer expense. Yet the rubbish still sits there. Andy Burnham, the Manchester mayor running to retain the seat for Labour against Reform UK's Robert Kenyon, has mentioned the dump in election leaflets and worked with Simons to pressure authorities. Reform has seized on it as evidence of national decline under successive governments, with deputy leader Richard Tice announcing a "national action day" on July 4th to tackle waste crime through increased fines and enforcement.

But in Bickershaw, most residents are placing their faith in Burnham. Colin Peters, a retired IT worker, noted that Burnham is the only candidate who has actually mentioned the dump in his campaign materials. "He's obviously from this area," Peters said, "so he might actually put things forward with more to do with the north-west of the UK, rather than everything being concentrated in the south-east and south." Doris, eighty-two, put it more simply: "He's one of us." Rowson said Burnham had already helped her and given her confidence he would continue pushing. She believes he could change "that north and south divide; that's the big one."

Marilyn Naylor, who lives opposite the school fields, acknowledged the political calculation. "I mean, he's done so much for Manchester, hasn't he? I think the problem now is when it's being said that he's only doing this to get in, which he may be, but he has to get in somewhere, doesn't he?" She too is backing Burnham. One woman, asked about the dump's future, simply said as she drove away: "It'll still be there in five years' time."

The Environment Agency says important preparatory steps must be completed before the clearance operation can begin, and that once these are done, removal should proceed swiftly. The duchy of Lancaster, which now owns the land after the original owners could not be traced, said it remains committed to working with Wigan council and the agency to address the issue. For residents breathing the air of Bickershaw, these assurances feel distant. The dump is not just waste. It is a test of whether anyone in power actually listens to the north.