Fly-tipping: Residential Areas

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for setting the scene incredibly well. I welcome the Minister, who we are very fortunate to have. She is committed to the very things that we are asking for. I wish her well as she pursues these matters. We are not talking about a minor inconvenience or a bit of harmless litter; we are talking about deliberate, criminal environmental vandalism that directly devalues people’s homes, attracts vermin to their doorsteps and robs law-abiding citizens of their hard-earned money.

I am going to give a Northern Ireland perspective, which will not be a big surprise to anybody, but it is important that we put on record where we are. The Northern Ireland environmental statistics report confirms that public anger has reached a boiling point. A staggering 73% of citizens are deeply concerned about our environment. For the first time, air and water pollution has been officially overtaken as the single greatest environmental anxiety for households in Northern Ireland by illegal dumping and littering, which was chosen by some 34% of respondents.

When I am at home, I live in Greyabbey. The main town is Newtownards, where my office is. I drive up and down that road two to three times a day—maybe more. People litter their KFCs, their McDonald’s, their sandwiches and their tins. They go out the window and are usually hidden in the grass until the grass is cut. When the grass is cut, guess what? The litter that has been lying there for maybe six months suddenly becomes accessible. The National Trust in Mount Stewart is out, as is the council, trying to do something.

We have a beautiful nation. Recent figures show that almost 340 major illegal dumping sites were actively investigated in Northern Ireland in the past year alone. There is an epidemic. My constituency crosses two council areas: Ards and North Down, but I also partially represent Newry, Mourne and Down. They suffer some of the worst littering. They have some 31 major investigated illegal waste sites.

That is not counting the mattresses that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes referred to. People do not take their mattress down to the dump; they throw it into the laybys of the Ards peninsula. They do not count the black bins full of rotting household waste, abandoned in the scenic coastal paths of Bangor or the rural lanes of the Ards peninsula. Every single week, local councils are forced to divert immense resources just to clean up after these waste cowboys. The Northern Ireland Environment Agency has spent some half a million pounds clearing up illegal sites just in the past period.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I feel honoured to intervene on the hon. Gentleman; it is often the other way around. Fly-tipping is a big issue in my constituency, as it is in his. There is frequent fly-tipping around the cemetery in Kilmarnock, for example. Does he agree that part of the problem with tackling this is a lack of proper funding for local government? In Glasgow, for example, the Scottish Government have not properly funded Glasgow city council. Does he agree that tackling this requires resourcing for local government?

[Jim Shannon]

I certainly do. It is an absolute disgrace that, across Northern Ireland, we see fewer than six successful illegal dumping prosecutions per year. Criminal fly-tippers are treating minor fixed penalties as nothing more than a business expense. That must change. We need to back our local authorities in Ards and North Down with the statutory teeth that they need. If a person is caught destroying a residential neighbourhood with illegal waste, the authorities should have the immediate power to crush their vehicle and publicly name and shame them.

Our communities deserve clean, safe and dignified places to raise their families. It is time to stop mollycoddling these criminals, clean up our streets, and restore pride to residential areas in the whole of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I support the comments from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, and look forward to the Minister’s response and the other contributions.

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[Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for bringing us this important debate. We have heard many contributions about the impact on local pride, sense of belonging and importantly mental health, but it was uplifting that pretty much all Members spoke about the great work that volunteers do to tackle litter and fly-tipping in their area. It seems that everyone has some Wombles in their area—I am not 100% sure of the collective noun for Wombles, but I think it might follow the wombat and be a wisdom of Wombles. I am very pleased to say that in Epping Forest we have the Loughton town council Wombles.

[Jim Shannon]

They are not Wombles, but the Strangford Lough and Newtownards Wildfowlers clear the foreshore at Strangford Lough every Sunday—they did it this Sunday past. Their work as volunteers is very much admired.

[Dr Hudson]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. We have heard great contributions from across the House today.

Let me turn to some of the figures, which speak for themselves. Councils in England dealt with 1.26 million incidents of fly-tipping in 2024-25. That was a 9% increase on the previous year, and both the fifth successive annual increase and among the highest figure on record. The majority of those incidents, 62%, involved household waste. The most common sources were not lorry loads from organised criminals, although that is an issue I will come to, but car boots and small vans—everyday domestic dumps.

Across the country, our constituents have sadly become all too familiar with the sight of dumped bin bags, mattresses and white goods including fridges, freezers, washing machines and dishwashers. The effects are serious. As well as the obvious awful environmental consequences and the effects on nature and wildlife, fly-tipping is a public health problem, as dumped waste attracts vermin, creates fire risk and can contaminate soil and local watercourses. The harm is not only physical. Antisocial behaviour such as fly-tipping causes real anxiety and distress to residents who live with it.

Sadly, my constituents in Epping Forest are not immune to the blight of fly-tipping and its harmful impacts, with many serious cases across our area caused by shameless criminals who should face the full extent of the law. Fly-tipping threatens the precious wildlife and biodiversity that our forest of Epping Forest is so privileged to enjoy. As a positive counter to that situation, I have been privileged to meet unsung heroes, litter-picking groups right across Epping Forest, including Waltham Abbey community group and Theydon Bois parish council, who selflessly give up their time to clean up our communities, as I have seen at first hand on joining their litter picks.

However, the sight of copious numbers of discarded large nitrous oxide canisters, used illegally for drug misuse and then chucked on the side of roads for those who do the right thing to clear up, is incredibly concerning. As I have raised in the House many times—I raised it with the Minister just last week—any activity to clear up waste needs to address that issue as a priority for urban, rural and semi-rural communities alike. Will the Minister outline the steps that the Government are taking to tackle the illegal use of nitrous oxide and the subsequent discarding of dangerous canisters, damaging our environment?

The previous Conservative Government understood the fly-tipping problem and the need for further action. We increased the upper limit for fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping from £400 to £1,000 and established the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, a multi-agency taskforce bringing together key stakeholders, including the Environment Agency, the police, the National Crime Agency, the British Transport Police, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the National Fire Chiefs Council and the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management. Through intelligence sharing and resource prioritisation, it has supported hundreds of operations contributing to arrests. I am pleased that the current Government are continuing with that measure.

We Conservatives also introduced several projects across England that sought to crack down on fly-tipping in residential areas, including portable CCTV cameras to patrol and capture footage across Northumberland, anti-climb fencing to protect neighbourhood areas in Hyndburn and larger recycling bins in better locations in Mansfield to ensure that the public have access to the correct disposal facilities. Those projects had demonstrable positive effects.

In Durham, which received funding from the last Government, the county council introduced educational bin stickers and permanent signage and installed CCTV on existing lighting columns. As a result, fly-tipping was cut by more than 60%. In Hyndburn, installing fencing and gates to prevent access to fly-tipping hotspots saw fly-tipping decrease by 100% in those areas in the following three months. The council saved approximately £4,000 in waste removal and clean-up costs over that period.

In addition, the Conservative Government passed the landmark Environment Act 2021, which laid the foundation for electronic waste tracking, a measure the current Government are now implementing. I had the opportunity to discuss that with the Minister just last week as we passed a necessary piece of secondary legislation on that subject.

The Minister will be aware that His Majesty’s official Opposition tabled amendments during the passage of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 that would have added points to driving licences for fly-tipping. That was a Conservative manifesto commitment and it is most welcome that the Government have finally adopted that policy.

On the subject of manifestos, the Labour manifesto included this commitment:

“Fly-tippers and vandals will…be forced to clean up the mess they have created.”

I am sure that the Minister will have had the same conversations as I have had with farmers and landowners about the issue of fly-tipping on private property: that is not the responsibility of the local authority, whereas on public land it tends to be. We have heard about that from across the House today.

When the fly-tipping is on private property, the landowner in many cases is left to pay sometimes thousands of pounds to clean up someone else’s mess. To make the situation worse, the landowner may sometimes face landfill tax liabilities despite being the victim, not the perpetrator. Meanwhile, offenders frequently face little or no meaningful action. Once again, the figures speak for themselves: nine in 10 members of the Country Land and Business Association report being targeted within the past year, with over three quarters suffering a significant financial impact. Although stronger enforcement and prevention measures will help to reduce incidents happening, can the Minister outline what support is available to landowners and farmers who are being particularly targeted?

I would like to touch on the fact that although fly-tipping happens all over the country, some areas suffer more than others. The last Government provided targeted investment to the areas most affected by fly-tipping. Furthermore, just as the very act of fly-tipping varies geographically, so too does the rate of enforcement action. Only 31% of fly-tipping incidents are investigated, and over half the investigations result in no further action. Across England in 2024-25, there were just 13 custodial sentences for fly-tipping offences.

The Government have issued guidance to local councils, but guidance is one thing and action another. The Minister may be aware that the Countryside Alliance has called on the Government to incentivise local authorities to use the enforcement powers available to them. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that suggestion.

We are united across the House in our shared desire to end fly-tipping and to ensure that those who commit this crime are punished appropriately. To do that, local authorities need the right resources and tools, but more importantly they need to use them. We can do more to tackle fly-tipping, and I hope that the Government come forward with ambitious proposals.

It has been great today to see so many people from across the House talking not only about this issue, but very much about what it means to their local community. A sense of optimism comes from highlighting the great work that local volunteers do. To conclude, I thank for their great contributions and interventions my hon. Friends the Members for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) and for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) and the hon. Members for Gorton and Denton (Hannah Spencer), for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan), for Hexham (Joe Morris), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin), for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell), for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack), for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Lillian Jones), for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) and for Ilford South (Jas Athwal).

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing this very well attended debate. Let me also thank hon. Members from across the House who have made valuable points. It is great to hear from the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople about everything that this Government need to do, but it was under the coalition Government and their cuts that the beginnings of this public squalor occurred. In the so-called big society of David Cameron, we did not realise we were all going to have to become litter-picking Womble troops, set up our own food banks to feed our communities and end up being lollipop crossing wardens as well, because of the severe cuts that happened to local government on the coalition Government’s watch.

It is fitting that we are having this debate at the beginning of London Climate Action Week. Everybody’s environment starts at their front door—it is not something out there in the oceans and forests; it is about stuff that is literally in the streets where we live. As my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) said, this is a matter of social justice. It is about environmental justice, but also about the poorest people bearing the consequences of environmental crime. It is an epidemic that proliferated under the coalition and it became a pandemic from 2015. The failure to implement any new policy and the starvation of local government that saw local tips close led to this criminal activity and this waste crime epidemic.

Fly-tipping scars our streets and parks and takes pride away but it also robs us, as taxpayers. In the 2024-25 financial year alone, waste criminals—they are not cowboys; they are criminals—evaded at least £1 billion of landfill tax. Every fridge and bit of kitchen equipment dumped as a result of a refurb has not been disposed of correctly in either landfill or incineration; that is unacceptable. We are determined to take back control of our streets, parks and countryside from those criminals.

The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson) talked about setting up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. Since coming into office, we have boosted the Environment Agency’s enforcement budget for the current financial year by 50%, from £10 million to over £15 million. Over the next three years, we will give the Environment Agency an additional £45 million, so that budget is going up from £10 million to £15 million this year and then up to £30 million—we have trebled it. We are not producing action plans, but putting our money where our mouth is. That will mean more boots on the ground and more drones in the air.

We have pursued major regulatory reforms and boosted the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. Since the Government came to power, the EA has stopped illegal waste activity at over 1,500 sites and has achieved 125 prosecutions, with 10 people going to prison. Crimestoppers has launched a national campaign encouraging the public to play their part by calling 0800 555 111 to anonymously report suspicious activity. I encourage all hon. Members to amplify that campaign, which is running on social media at the moment. Our waste crime action plan is the next step and it is a scale-up. First, we are preventing illegal activity before it starts; secondly, we are strengthening enforcement so that offenders are caught and punished; and thirdly, we are cleaning up the most harmful sites. Let me take each of those points in turn.

First there is prevention. Stopping waste crime means putting legislation through Parliament that will replace the outdated paper systems, an issue neglected under the previous Government, with mandatory digital waste tracking: a single UK-wide platform that will monitor waste movements in real time. Regulators will be able to spot diversion away from legitimate pathways and spot fraud, such as misdescription of waste, at a much earlier stage in the chain.

We have laid secondary legislation that will overhaul the regulation of the waste carriers, brokers and dealers system so that there will be no more Beau Vines registered as waste dealers. We are moving from a light-touch system to full environmental permitting. We are removing widely abused waste permit exemptions on tyres, end-of-life vehicles and scrap metal, and tightening up seven other waste permit exemptions. We are also going after the tax avoiders. HMRC is expanding tax check rules to the waste sector, so if someone’s tax record is questionable, we will ask them questions before renewing their licence.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mary Creagh]

I will make some progress. We are matching prevention with tougher enforcement and pursuing the criminals with every tool in the box. We are increasing the Environment Agency’s budget, as I mentioned, and giving it new police-style powers to intervene earlier, disrupt the criminals and bring them to justice before their illegal operations become established. We have to nip this in the bud when it happens; that is what we know works.