‘I pay £1k a year for a private garage – but someone’s dumped three tonnes of rubbish inside’

A man opened the door to his private garage and found three tons of someone’s else fly-tipped rubbish dumped inside.

Martyn de Young pays £960 a year for the lock-up, which he’s used for the past 30 years with no issue.

That was until August last year when he opened the garage to find it full of someone else’s rubbish.

Over the past 14 months, the grandad-of-five has been locked in an ongoing battle with owner Clarion Housing to clear it – an ordeal he describes as a ‘depressing tale of woe’.

To make matters worse, his mobility scooter is trapped inside.

He first struggled to get inside the garage in Larkfield, Kent on August Bank Holiday Monday, when he discovered it filled with a sofa, builders’ rubbish, laminate flooring and some Wellington boots.

Initially, contractors sent to clear the fly-tipping got the wrong garage and took a ton of waste out before having to put it back in when realising the mistake.

Eventually, clearance teams removed a ton from the right garage and were due to come back to clear the remaining two tons. But to date, this hasn’t happened.

Martyn says when a second visit was arranged, damage on the door and lock meant the contractors were unable to open it.

As a result, Clarion was supposed to arrange further clearance on another date, but never did.

Despite several attempts to contact the housing association for an update, in March, Martyn popped to the garage to see if any progress had been made, only to find it had been completely boarded up without notice.

Clarion subsequently confirmed this had been done to prevent further fly-tipping.

CCTV was supposed to be installed as a deterrent, but he says nothing has materialised.

It now marks 14 months of paying to rent a garage he can’t use, costing an estimated £1,200.

‘In the meantime they’ve put my rent up,’ he said. ‘A year is a long time to wait. I don’t need the mobility scooter anymore now, luckily. But I had to borrow one for a while, and it’s been a bit of a nightmare really.

‘It’s not doing my finances any good; I’d still be paying the money out if I was using it, but it’s a bit of a waste if I can’t use it.

‘It’s a bit annoying as a pensioner I don’t get that much to spare, so it will be nice to get that [money] back if I can.’

The retired IT consultant says when he finally got a call from someone at Clarion on October 27, there was no explanation as to why it had taken so long to get it fixed.

He continued: ‘When it got to a year, I thought now’s the time to start doing something about it, and I wrote to them asking them to sort it out.

‘It’s just been going on and on and on for 14 months. It has affected me; it’s been annoying and I don’t usually get annoyed.

‘It’s gutting and completely unnecessary, really. It could have been sorted out right at the beginning.

‘If they expect me to pay rent, and the other people to pay rent, then they should be looking after the properties to some extent and keeping them secure.

‘They had said about putting up CCTV, but they haven’t done that. I’m paying rent for it, so I should be able to use it.’

Martyn had suffered from arthritis in his hip and had initially gone to the garage to recover his mobility scooter when he discovered it had been filled with rubbish.

However, the inability to retrieve it, meant he had to borrow an alternative scooter for several months, ahead of a total hip replacement.

He said: ‘As a pensioner, it is quite a hit on my finances for something I am getting no benefit from.

‘Frankly, I am very disappointed at the lack of contact I have had from Clarion… it is over six months since I have heard anything, apart from a notice of rent increase!’

Martyn wants an early intervention to clear the garage and to recover his property, which includes his scooter, a scale model railway layout, family heirlooms and more.

In addition, he wants the garage to be refurbished, with a replacement door and a new, secure lock.

He thinks he should be refunded all rental payments he had made since the issue was reported, and a suspension of payments until the garage is in full use.

No one was arrested or charged in connection with the fly-tipping, which Martyn believes was deposited between July 1 and August 25, 2025, as he had not been in the garage for around six to eight weeks.

At the time, several of the other garages had also been fly-tipped.

A Clarion Housing spokesperson said they were ‘sorry for the inconvenience’ experienced and are working with him to resolve the outstanding issues with his garage.

He said: ‘We will also reimburse the rent he has paid for the period the garage has been unusable.

‘The other affected garages at Raven Close were cleared and secured to prevent further fly-tipping, and we are exploring additional security measures for the site, including a controlled-access barrier.’

The spokesperson added that staff had been in contact with Martyn to arrange clearance of the remaining waste with him present, so he can identify his belongings.