Gateshead Council has admitted Bensham and Saltwell are its worst affected areas for fly-tipping.
The admission comes after Liberal Democrat activist Leanne Brand hit out after a spate of incidents which she fears will increase the number of rats in the area.
The would-be councillor has said the problem has reached a tipping point and has called for action but the council said it is doing as much as it can at a time when funding is already stretched.
She said: "Rubbish dumped is left for days on end and the culprits are allowed to get off scot-free.
"I think Bensham and Saltwell are the worst hit areas in the borough and residents are frustrated by the lack of action being taken.
"At the very least more fines need to be issued and the people doing it need to be prosecuted.
"Increasing prosecution is needed particularly for people repeatedly fly-tipping.
"If people see more action being taken it will give them a real reason not to fly-tip."
The council said it has a special 'behavioural change team' to try and ensure residents understand how to recycle and dispose of their waste correctly.
There is also a patrol team and workers who almost exclusively work in Bensham to collect rubbish dumped in the street.
However, the council conceded it is a never ending struggled.
A Gateshead Council spokesman said: “The amount of deliberate fly tipping in the Bensham and Saltwell area is clearly much worse and more extensive than any other area of Gateshead.
“We are already deploying far more cleaning resources into this one area than the rest of Gateshead, but the littering and fly tipping continues to worsen. This is certainly not for any lack of effort on our part.
“In an attempt to solve the problem, we’ve piloted a range of different approaches to try to identify the root causes, including a 6-month waste pilot scheme which put extreme focus on one area and the people who live there to ensure we understood the reasons why fly-tipping takes place.
"We’ve visited tenants in their homes, spoken to landlords, urged, helped and encouraged them not to fly tip their rubbish in the streets and to do the right thing. Yet the problem still persists.
“We have also prosecuted 40 people in this area alone for fly tipping and other waste offences and have another 14 cases yet to go to court, and we’ve issued 10 Fixed Penalty Notices."
Anyone caught fly-tipping can be fined between £120 and £400 with a fixed penalty notice but cases can go to court with a maximum sentence of up to 12-months imprisonment and a £50,000 fine.
But in Gateshead the council is attempting to educate residents to help cut the likelihood people will offend.
The spokesman added: “We’re already operating a Private Landlord Licencing Scheme in the area as a way of exercising more control on the behaviour of both tenants and landlords. We are continuing to prosecute people for littering and fly tipping.
"We’ve launched an Environmental Enforcement team who patrol and take punitive action against litterers, and we deploy an additional mobile squad of workers who patrol almost exclusively in the Bensham area collecting the rubbish that people dump in the street.
"Yet as quickly as we remove the rubbish, more appears.
“We are continuing to explore further ideas on how we might tackle this problem.”
Gateshead Council says it uses "state-of-the-art" CCTV to catch offenders and has a team dedicated to investigating fly-tipping and has legal powers to issue fixed penalty notices which can lead to prosecution.
The council has warned residents not to approach anyone they see fly-tipping, and not to touch waste or disturb the site, instead they are advised to take as many details as possible and report the incident to the authority.
