A plume of smoke rolling across the valley at five past eleven on a September night, flames over the rooftops five nights later, three sites burning at once the following week.
These are the waste fires residents of Llansamlet have been reporting since spring 2025. Swansea Council says it is now stepping up its efforts to stop them, with eviction among the options on the table.
The council and South Wales Police say they are intensifying their joint effort to stop waste being burned at Gypsy and Traveller sites in the area. The fire service and Natural Resources Wales are part of it. There is a new enforcement plan, a fresh review of every legal route still open, and the council says it is “determined to leave no lawful avenue unexplored”.
‘Why have there been no prosecutions?’ The council’s answer
The council has also answered the question residents keep asking. “Residents understandably want to know why there have not yet been prosecutions,” a council spokesperson said. “The law requires evidence identifying who started or organised the burning.”
Even with clear evidence that burning continues, the spokesperson added, “identifying individuals to the standard required by the courts remains extremely difficult. Without that evidence, a prosecution is unlikely to succeed.”
The statement comes a fortnight after the admin of the Llansamlet, Birchgrove and surrounding areas Hub, a community Facebook group, posted a template complaint for members to send to the council’s chief executive, Martin Nicholls.
Becky Hargreaves wrote on 22 September that residents had been reporting the fires regularly since spring 2025 “with no improvement. It’s actually gotten worse,” she said. “Three sites were burning last night, literally poisoning us all.”
The template demands an update on the enforcement and legal action under way, a faster response when burning is reported, and an explanation of what the council does with the photos, dates and times residents send in.
Those photos stack up. One, taken from above the valley at 11.05pm on 11 September, shows a plume from the Mill Stream site stretching the width of the sky. Another, at 9.40pm on 16 September, shows smoke and a glow of flame near Pant y Blawd.
Notices, warnings, an injunction, and still the smoke
The council says it has already served legal notices and issued abatement notices, the formal orders that require a nuisance to stop, and has won a court injunction banning the storage, transport and burning of waste at the Tŷ Gwyn site.
Last autumn it said it had served abatement notices on three businesses in the area and given a written warning to a fourth over burning at the Mill Stream Way travellers site. When the fires came back within weeks, its line was “the burning must stop”.
Complaints about smoke and people burning waste were still rising when councillors on the climate change and nature scrutiny panel heard about them in March, and the papers for that meeting did not say what had happened since.
Going after the lorries before the fires are lit
The new plan is to stop the waste before it reaches a bonfire. The council says the strategy is to “disrupt illegal waste activity at every stage”: more intelligence gathering, closer tracking of vehicle movements, and targeting the sources and suppliers of the illegal waste in the first place.
Residents say they already know where some of it comes from. “They advertise taking away black bags for £2 each,” Ms Hargreaves wrote in the group, where members have been asking how anyone could believe rubbish collected that cheaply simply disappears. “People need to have more common sense.”
She is also urging neighbours to go over the council’s head, to Senedd members and MPs, as well as sending the complaint.
The agencies will share more information with each other, the council says, and additional surveillance and enforcement measures are being considered.
Alongside that, council officers and its legal advisers are reviewing every option, which the council lists as further legal action, tougher enforcement, “eviction proceedings where appropriate” and more joint work with its partners.
The spokesperson said the burning of waste was “completely unacceptable”. “Residents are right to expect action, and we want to be clear that this issue remains one of the Council’s highest priorities.”
The spokesperson added: “We hear residents, we share their frustration, and we are committed to taking every possible step to deliver the long-term solution local communities deserve.”
‘More than just a nuisance’: the risk to the crews who put them out
A spokesperson for Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service said waste fires were “more than just a nuisance”. They can be unpredictable, pose significant risks to firefighters and communities, and release harmful smoke that affects people and the environment, the service said.
South Wales Police said it recognised the impact on residents and shared their concerns. A spokesperson said the force would keep working with partners on unlawful activity, back enforcement action where appropriate and “do everything within our powers to help protect local communities”.
Natural Resources Wales, the environmental regulator, is asking anyone who sees a pollution incident or a serious environmental concern to report it on its 24-hour incident hotline, 0300 065 3000.
No timescale has been given for the new measures or for the legal review.
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