STAFF and volunteers at a Hampshire charity shop were stunned after a speedboat was dumped in a car park near the premises.

The vessel, attached to a trailer, was left in Oakhill House car park behind Oxfam Furniture in Shirley earlier this week.

Zak Price, assistant manager at the Romsey Road store, said staff are powerless to remove the boat as it was left in a private car park instead of on council-owned land.

Mr Price, 30, said the car park has always suffered from flytipping – with mattresses, sofas and furniture regularly dumped there - and that the store had contacted the owner of the car park about the latest incident.

But staff were left shocked after the 20ft pink boat named “Crazy Dogz” and its trailer were left in the car park overnight at the weekend.

A surprised Suzie Revill, 46, manager of the Oxfam store, said: “It’s not something we would expect to see as a donation, the usual menace of flytipping is unsaleable furniture. It’s just another mindless dumping in the area.”

Mr Price added. “Police are not interested because it is a private car park. It’s up to the landlord to get the problem solved.”

Suzie branded the offenders as “mindless”, adding: “We work very hard as volunteers and it’s quite disheartening to see people abusing that.

“These people are mindless. It’s out of sight and out of mind to them. It is unfortunately the culture of the way people are these days.”

Mrs Revill said she was told by a customer that the speedboat had been towed into the carpark by a van but no one had taken the registration of the vehicle.

She added that flytipping wasn't just affecting the shop – it was piling misery on residents who have to deal with the waste.

Mrs Revill said that in the past neighbours have asked the shop what it was doing to clear up dumped waste, even though it was not their responsibility.

Tony Jordan, 72, a retired community worker, who lives in sight of the shop, told the Echo: “A lot of people are slovenly and careless, they dump things because they can’t be bothered to dispose of it properly. A lot of the time there are dumped sofas and beds outside, and even remains of bonfires and fireworks. All we can do is contact local authorities.”

“Mess attracts mess, and I’m not surprised by this incident.”

Velga Rusina, a 59-year-old part-time cleaner said that flytipping had become a much bigger problem in the last 12 months.

"It attracts homeless people and alcoholics, it scares me because I have a young grandson. I won’t walk through the carpark if I’m on my own at night. Flytipping is giving the charity shop a bad reputation because people think it is them dumping unwanted furniture,” she said.

Shirley councillor Mark Chaloner says that he is aware that flytipping is a big problem across the city and Shirley, adding that: “We put a lot of money into the issue, but it is very hard to prosecute offenders because most of the time we can’t find out where it came from.”

The Echo was unable to contact the landowner.