A GREAT Lever man has been left £360 out of pocket after dropping a cigarette in front of a council officer and refusing to pick it up.

Gabor Balog was talking to a council enforcement officer on June 16 last year when he dropped a cigarette.

The officer, who at the time was investigating another property for presenting too much rubbish to binmen, asked him to pick it up, but Balog, aged 49, refused.

He was given a fixed penalty notice, which he failed to pay, and his case was sent to court.

Balog, of Danby Avenue, Great Lever, who then failed to turn up at court, was fined £55 and ordered to pay costs of £305.

He was one of five people who were successfully prosecuted by Bolton Council on Monday for fly-tipping, dog fouling or littering – paying nearly £2,000 in court bills between them.

The group, including a woman who was spotted allowing her dog to foul on Harper Green playing fields, were fined £475 and racked up other court costs of £1,462.

In May, Dulcie Burtak left 12 black bin bags at the back of his home in Union Road, Tonge Moor.

The 46-year-old did not attend court and was fined £110, part of a £512 court bill.

Vincent Moss pleaded guilty at his magistrates court hearing on January 19 to fly-tipping.

He had left household waste at the back of his house in Halliwell Road, as well as some loose litter on a nearby grassed area.

He initially claimed that the waste, which he said he had put in his garden for his grandmother to take to the tip, had been moved by other people.

Moss was also fined £110 and forced to pay costs of £380.

Tracey O'Brian let her white Bull Terrier off the lead on Harper Green playing fields on February 25 and allowed it to foul on the grass.

She walked away without clearing it up and admitted to an officer that she had no clean-up bags with her.

O'Brian, aged 47, of Lily Avenue, Farnworth, admitted the offence and must now pay a £370 court bill.

The fifth litterer, 36-year-old Istvan Horvath, aged 36, dumped a red sofa, a fridge and a blue bucket in the back yard of a property in Bashall Street, Heaton.

When another resident took a picture of the rubbish and showed them to a man from the property, the response was a shrug.

A council officer interviewed Horvath on June 11, and he said he had put them there to take to the tip because he had only been in the property for a short period.

He admitted the offence to magistrates and was given a £320 court bill.

Cllr Nick Peel, the council's executive cabinet member for the environment, said: "It is not victimless. We are all victims because it blights the environment.

"People have got to live next door to these neighbours who put rubbish in their back streets.

"It is not acceptable and there is never an excuse for it."