Fly-tipping in England decreases by nine per cent

Fly-tipping incidents in England decreased for a fifth year in a row between the financial years 2010-11 and 2011-12, official figures from Defra show.

According to ‘The Official Flytipping Statistics for England for 2011/12’, local authorities (LAs) spent £37.4 million clearing up 744,000 incidents of illegally dumped waste in England in 2011-12, down from £41.3 million for just over 800,000 incidents in 2010-11. This constitutes a decrease of nine per cent.

A breakdown of the figures show that over 64 per cent of items fly-tipped involved household waste (down five per cent from the year before), with nearly 43 per cent of all rubbish dumped disposed of on highways.

However, the amount of waste being fly-tipped was small, with 38 per cent either single black bag or car boot load size, and 31 per cent the approximate size of a small van load. A further 18 per cent of incidents (138,000) were recorded as single items, such as furniture, mattresses, etc.

Despite a 14 per cent decrease in enforcement actions in 2011-12 (LAs carried out 490,000 enforcement actions, costing an estimated £17.6 million in 2011-12), there were nearly 2,800 prosecutions, of which 99.6 per cent resulted in conviction. Local authorities also issued over 84,500 warning letters, nearly 50,000 statutory notices and almost 3,600 formal cautions in the last financial year.

Responding to the official statistics, Councillor Mike Jones, Chairman of the Local Government Assosciation’s (LGA) Environment and Housing Board, said: "Despite budgets having been reduced by government, councils are continuing to find effective ways of tackling fly-tipping, sending a clear message to those responsible that they will be caught and punished for their selfish actions.

"Today's figures are proof that councils are winning the fight against fly-tippers. This is the fifth year in a row that incidents have fallen, with the number of reported cases now down by half a million since 2007. And by no coincidence the number of prosecutions for the worst offenders is up with almost all cases that make it to court resulting in a successful conviction.

"There is simply no excuse for anyone to dump waste illegally. Chasing down the culprits and clearing up their mess costs taxpayers tens of millions of pounds every year. Councils will continue to work with the Environment Agency, the police and the public to keep our streets safe, clean and free from the blight of fly-tipping."

Figures from the Environment Agency (EA) were also released with Defra’s official statistics, showing that the EA took forward 249 prosecutions in relation to illegal waste activities (including the illegal dumping or export of waste, or operating an illegal site), resulting in £1.4 million of fines.

According to the EA’s figures, of the 224 incidents of ‘large-scale illegal dumping of waste in England’, the most common items illegally disposed of came from the ‘construction/demolition/excavation’ sector (53 incidents in 2011-12), followed by ‘chemical drums, oil or fuel’ items (41 incidents).

The official Defra’s statistics are based on local authority figures submitted to Flycapture, the national database set up by Defra, the Environment Agency and the Local Government Assosciation.

Read ‘The Official Flytipping Statistics for England for 2011/12’.