Have you bagged a lockdown freebie from someone’s driveway?

From scales to a set of speakers, children’s toys to a £150 chandelier – there’s no telling what might be deemed surplus to requirements once you get around to having a good old clear out.

Britain’s coronavirus lockdown means many households will finally be turning to DIY projects they’ve neglected for years, or at last have time to throw out unwanted items languishing in attics, garages or spare rooms.

But at the same time, the lockdown means charity shops and dumps, the usual repositories for the things we don’t need anymore, have also been shut.

While the local tips are beginning to reopen, it means that for many, the only option for those trying to give away things no longer needed but still usable – too good to bin – has been to leave them on the driveway and hope someone snaps them up.

And households across Britain have been snapping up items on their daily exercise excursions. 

Gary Johns, from Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, is redecorating a downstairs room and when we spoke to him last week had so far managed to shift a clock, a lamp, a vase and a chest of drawers from his driveway.

Gary, who works for the Government, is classed as vulnerable to the coronavirus so wouldn’t be able to leave the house to take things to a charity shop or the dump even if they were open.

All four items hdad been snapped up, while his latest task was to try and find a new home for a £150 chandelier bought a few years ago, which still works fine.

He said if no one snapped it up his kids would probably have to take it to the dump, but hoped someone would be interested.

‘There’s a saying, that one person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure’, he told This is Money. Since we spoke to him last week, the chandelier too has found a new home.

A YouGov poll two years ago found one in eight adults admitted to taking something left outside a home that was being given away.

While the practice is frowned upon by some, and often derided as ‘middle-class fly tipping’, some Britons at the moment will feel like they have little other choice, and that, as Gary says, their unwanted items may prove useful for someone else.

One resident of a block of flats in Islington, North London, told a local Facebook group they’d put ‘a set of scales and two protein bars downstairs’ which were ‘free to anyone who wants them,’ and they disappeared quickly.  

In a village east of Edinburgh, a family of four put a collection of toys outside their home, having cleared out their two children’s rooms during the lockdown. 

They said they hoped they would keep some other children amused during the UK quarantine, which has gone on for nearly two months. 

Having put the toys out on Saturday evening, Lynda and Craig Glen noticed they had all been snapped up by Monday morning. 

Andy Fewings, a Green Party councillor on Burnley Council, posted a picture on social media platform Twitter at the end of April of a ‘free bees’ ‘freecycling’ shelf he had created. He tweeted: ‘Recycling centres need to open but let’s keep stuff from going to landfill.’

When This is Money spoke to him, he said ‘almost everything’ put out had been taken, except for a wall bracket for a TV.

Some of the things put out included children’s toys, a lantern cage and a box of DVDs and blu-rays. He said: ‘The DVD supply gets restocked continuously, but the blu-rays are all gone though.

‘The best part has been messaged and cards of thanks from people as well as photos of items having been upcycled.’ 

And in one corner of Surrey, people are clearing out and leaving out items that are being posted on the local Facebook group. 

From courgette plants, children’s books and furniture to bikes, toys and a giant cardboard box for a garden lounger, there’s something for everyone.

But although the intention is for things to be given away for free, not to make money, that hasn’t stopped some trying to cash in.

One man from Wolverhampton brazenly sold a sofa for £180 on Facebook that he had previously picked up for free on the same post, telling MailOnline he’d sell ‘rain if he could’ and ‘the rubbish out of people’s bins’ if someone would buy it.

Community spirit or criminal offence?

But while some will see the practice as evidence of charity or community spirit, under normal circumstances leaving unwanted items, particularly furniture, on the street is often classed illegal fly tipping, which has surged since the lockdown.

The universities of Portsmouth and Southampton said in some rural communities there had been a 300 per cent increase in fly tipping, while a dumping ground in Newport, South Wales, just off the M4 has so much rubbish it can be seen on Google Earth.

An app called ClearWaste, which allows people to upload pictures of dumped rubbish so it can be passed onto local councils, reported a 54 per cent rise in fly tipping in the first week of lockdown at the end of March, which had risen to 75 per cent by Easter.

But while people leaving out unwanted items on the pavement outside their house or on their driveway is not the same thing as dumping a broken fridge in a farmer’s field, some have still fallen foul of the rules. 

Fines for fly tipping can be up to £400, with 2,052 worth £1.09million handed out in 2018-19, and leaving something on the pavement is still classed as a ‘highway’.

A mother of two from Nottingham was fined £75 in July 2018 after leaving three scooters and a parasol holder against her fence for collection by the scrap man.

Robert Nemeth, a Conservative councillor in Brighton, described the practice as ‘fly tipping with good intentions’, The Telegraph reported in August 2018.

Cllr Dan Humphreys, from the District Councils’ Network, which represents 187 local authorities, said: ‘Despite the impact of coronavirus, which has led to tip closures and a reduction in refuse collectors, almost all district councils are continuing to collect household waste and recycling normally or with only minor disruption. 

‘Councils are also starting to reopen bulky waste collections to help residents dispose of large items. Fly-tipping is never acceptable. 

‘We urge people to avoid using unlicensed waste disposal services exploiting the coronavirus crisis as these illegal operators generally fly-tip people’s rubbish and could see all parties prosecuted.

‘Councils appreciate residents may have larger amounts of rubbish building up and they will continue to work hard to keep waste and recycling services working as effectively as possible.’

Some charities including Scope and The Salvation Army, who would usually be the recipients of many unwanted items in normal times, have simply asked for people to hold onto their collections until their shops reopen, and said that bags of donations left outside clothing banks and shuttered shops would simply be consigned to landfill.

But, if the experiences of Gary, the Glens from Whitecraig, East Lothian, and This is Money’s own assistant editor are any indication, there might not be anything left to donate by then.