A family farm and tourist attraction has pleaded for a “phantom” fly-tipper to stop after being forced to fork out hundreds of pounds to dispose of dumped rubbish.

Kent Life in Lock Lane, Maidstone has been struck by a repeated “offender” several times, leaving behind garden waste, pallets and wood chippings at the farm site.

Manager Rob Bracken says the grounds have suffered from fly-tipping on and off for years but the issue has have been heightened of late by a culprit – who appears to be the same guy “hell bent on causing us a problem”.

He told KentOnline: “Because our car park's quite big and it's open in the daytime, we don't police it, you can quite easily get in and out.

“A few months ago, one guy in particular just came and started throwing all his stuff out of the back of his car into our car park and then just drove off at a high speed.

“Not only is it lazy, it's also antisocial, and in theory, you're taking money out of the animals’ mouths.”

Recent incidents include a pile of wood chippings, six pallets and five bags full of garden waste dumped at the attraction.

Disposing of it has set them back about £300, says Rob.

He added: “There is a lot of garden waste this time, and we have to burn that – we don't send that off so we're having to take that to a separate place to get rid of it in a different way.

“We can’t dump it – we've got to then start putting it onto our tractor and driving it to the bottom of the site and unpacking it, but we shouldn't be doing that.

“To be honest, it's turned into almost like a Victor Meldrew where I think what is being thrown next?”

Kent Life is owned by charity Cobtree Trust and features family-friendly attractions across its 28-acre site, including a farm, nature trail, shops, eateries, play barn and more.

The issue has been reported to Maidstone council, but as the site is private land there is little they can do to help.

Rob said: “Throwing your rubbish out is illegal – we've already put lots of signs around, and we do it on a constant basis.

“I would just like people to think, if people read it, or the guy that's tipping reads it and thinks, ‘Well, actually, I was a bit of an idiot, I shouldn't be doing that because the tip's only around the corner – I'm going to think twice’.

“If I catch the guy, I'll be pushing the full weight of the law to make sure that they don't do it again.”

But it’s not just the fly-tipping the attraction has had to face, there have also been longstanding issues with litter and anti-social behaviour.

It's like, for goodness sake, when's it going to stop?

The attraction manager said “There's a lot of rubbish that builds up outside our site that we clean.

“People park there, throw all the cans of pop out the car, and sweet wrappers and stuff, so there is quite a bit of a littering problem around where we are.”

He added: “Where we are in the evening, it's quite dark, so people are walking past and spraying.

“We had some nice signs up outside for the guy who runs the Kentish lady boat – he had to take all those down because some were completely graffitied over them.

“It's like, for goodness sake, when's it going to stop?”