Fly-tipping: Residential Areas

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Ayoub Khan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mary Creagh]

No, I will finish my point. The Joint Unit for Waste Crime is strengthening its hand. It is bringing together environmental watchdogs, police forces and the National Crime Agency to dismantle the serious organised crime networks that blight our communities. The penalties for waste crime must match the harm it causes. The carriers, brokers and dealers reform will increase penalties for offenders to up to five years in prison. We know that sometimes those offenders will not be prosecuted for environmental crime but potentially for money laundering because they are not just criminals in one area; they have an entire criminal enterprise of which waste crime is just one branch.

On the clean-up, we are going after the criminals to make sure that they pay. We have worked with other Departments to publish criteria for cleaning up those sites where intervention is most needed. We are currently funding clean-up for Bolton House Road in Wigan, Alan Ramsbottom Way in Hyndburn and Worthing Road in Sheffield. We will go much further to prevent land owners picking up the bill in the future and work with the insurance industry to explore new models to shield farmers, business and land owners from bearing the cost of waste in their areas.

We recognise the role that councils have and the different challenges that they face. Thanks to this Labour Government, they have more powers at their disposal than ever before: issuing fixed penalty notices, prosecuting offenders and launching investigations. Ealing council, for example, has issued 1,993 fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping in 2024-25. When councils say that they do not have the money, it is often that they do not have the will or the skills. They can also seize the vehicles of suspected fly-tippers and crush them—or, for those interested in reuse, as I am, sell them. We have published best practice guidance and case studies on vehicle seizure to give councils the confidence to use those powers.

The National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group, chaired by DEFRA officials, has that guidance and Members may wish to bring it to the attention of their local councils. We have secured powers in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 for courts to impose up to nine penalty points on driving licences for fly-tipping offences. That is a strong deterrent and will make people think twice before they do such a job for their mates on the weekend.

We are also consulting on a proposal to give local authorities powers to issue conditional cautions to suspected fly-tippers. Those are a range of pre-court community-based sanctions. We all want to see these guys—it is mostly guys—going to prison, but this Government inherited a court backlog along with prisons full to bursting. However, these cautions could see offenders cleaning our streets or parks in an unpaid capacity, and being required to pay back the cost of cleaning up the waste that they have dumped. It gives local authorities another tool in the box.

I pay tribute to all the volunteers who have worked in this area, not least in my own city of Coventry, including at Destination Ball Hill and the Reverend Matthew Bull at St John the Divine, where I spent a very sweaty two hours cleaning up Willenhall last Friday.

[Ayoub Khan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mary Creagh]

I will not.

I went back on Saturday and already someone had littered their Burger King wrapper out of a car. The issue is about people and it is very annoying. As a cyclist, I remember posting a cigarette box back through the window of a motorist who had just littered it right in front of my bike; that was one of my more fruity exchanges.

We need to follow Coventry city council’s lead and have a wall of shame and CCTV, as there is in areas such as Clements Street in my constituency. Regarding the situation in Hexham, there is Waste and Resources Action Programme guidance on the accessibility of household waste and recycling centres. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) to bring that guidance to the attention of his council. It is also important that we have more tidy Fridays. Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe has been seconded from the Metropolitan police to the National Police Chief’s Council to co-ordinate this work between police forces across the country.

I am disappointed to hear about the Lib Dems in Portsmouth. It is really important for us to work with National Highways and crowd everybody into this space.