Fly-tipping: Tatton

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2025 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve for the first time under you chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) on securing today’s debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his intervention.

Fly-tipping is not just a load of rubbish; it is a serious environmental crime. As the right hon. Lady set out, it blights communities and the environment and harms wildlife, and it can lead to people not feeling safe where they live. We appreciate the difficulty that it poses for councils, farmers, landowners and private businesses, such as the Sainsbury’s whose car park she discussed in her speech. Local councils reported over a million fly-tipping incidents in 2023-24, which represents a significant cost burden to the economy. Over the last five years, these incidents have increased by 20%, so something is going wrong.

That is completely unacceptable, and this Government are serious about taking back control of our streets and our countryside. We have committed to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess they have created, as part of a crackdown on antisocial behaviour, and I look forward to providing further details on that commitment in due course. I take on board the point the right hon. Lady raised about the previous Government looking at putting points on driving licences, and I will find out where the DEFRA machine got to on that.

We recognise the role that councils have in tackling fly-tipping, which can happen for a variety of reasons. That can include people trying to do the right thing with their waste and inadvertently handing it over to hardened criminals seeking to make money from the co-ordinated dumping of large amounts of waste. The response has to be appropriate to the circumstances, but we want to see an effective enforcement strategy at the heart of local authority efforts to combat fly-tipping.

I encourage all councils to make good use of their powers, which include prosecution. As the right hon. Lady said, prosecution can lead to significant fines, a community sentence and even imprisonment and compensation for landowners’ clearance costs—those can also be secured through the courts. Although sentencing is a matter for the courts, the national fly-tipping prevention group, chaired by DEFRA officials, has previously produced guidance to support councils to present robust cases in court. Cheshire East is not currently a member of that group, and I encourage it and any other councils that wish to join to crowd in any good work that they might be doing.

Instead of prosecuting, local authorities can issue fixed penalty notices of up to £1,000, or £600 for those who pass their household waste to someone without the proper licence. They also have powers to stop, search and seize the vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. To help councils make full and proper use of their enforcement powers, we are seeking powers through the Crime and Policing Bill to provide statutory enforcement guidance that councils will need to have regard to. So it is a much more directional approach.

We need to get a grip on this issue because, as the right hon. Lady said, it affects both rural and inner-city areas. In rural areas, over 80% of farmers say they have been affected by fly-tipping on their land. We continue to work with the National Farmers Union and others through our fly-tipping prevention group to promote and disseminate good practice on how to prevent fly-tipping on private land.

I visited Watery Lane in Lichfield, where an entire van load was emptied one night, exactly as the right hon. Lady described. Those responsible knew that the other part of the road was closed, that there would be no passers-by and that there was no CCTV, so they just dumped the waste in the middle of the road, trapping people in their houses for a couple of days until that waste was shifted. I met the people affected and heard their anxiety about what they would do in a medical emergency and about how their kids would get to school. It is absolutely dreadful. I was curious about the fact that this was seen not as a nationally significant incident but as a local authority incident. That has provoked a series of questions in my mind about what qualifies as a significant incident.

We had a very good debate on fly-tipping last week at DEFRA oral questions—I am sorry the right hon. Lady was not able to join us for that. We heard about a series of excellent pieces of work being done by Luton council, which has had 32 prosecutions, and by Wolverhampton council, which uses store cards. In that case, if someone spots a fly-tipper, or they know somebody is doing something, and they report it to the council, they are rewarded with what is essentially a gift voucher. So there is some quite innovative work is going on.

Stoke-on-Trent council—a newly elected Labour council—has put this issue right at the top of its agenda. Having had 5,000 fly-tipping incidents, it has issued 4,800 enforcement notices and 1,974 fixed penalty notices, and there have been nine prosecutions. It is a kind of zero-tolerance approach. That does not necessarily mean that the issue goes away—often it goes somewhere else—but that approach in Stoke-on-Trent is delivering some really interesting wins. Another council is using drones as well; if someone thinks they are being watched, the disincentive is massive. So there is lots of innovation is going on, and nobody has a monopoly on wisdom when it comes to this issue.

The public also have a role to play, because approximately 60% of fly-tips involve household waste. We know where it happens—along the flank walls at the ends of terraces. I was out canvassing in Foleshill, and somebody was literally just about to do some fly-tipping in broad daylight in the middle of Coventry. The householder I was talking to spotted it and came out, and the guy got back in his van. Householders should check the register of waste carriers to avoid giving their waste to environmental criminals who promise quick, cheap waste collection but then dump the waste in our communities.

I would just say that Cheshire East’s 2022-23 recycling statistics place it in the top 25% of local authorities—it is at 52%. Fresh statistics will be published tomorrow, but it is in the top quartile of local authorities when it comes to people’s recycling rates, so it is clear that the local community really wants to do the right thing.

The right hon. Lady talked about waste carriers, which is a massive weakness. The Conservative Government left us with a system that is frankly not fit for purpose—it is essentially paper-based—so I have asked officials to look at how we can strengthen the current waste carriers, brokers and dealers regulatory regime to crack down on waste criminals. I will hopefully be saying something about that shortly—not today, but very soon.

The right hon. Lady raised the issue of householders getting rid of their rubbish. I do not really like the word “rubbish”; the word should be “materials”, because everything has a purpose. If we can repair it, reuse it or pass it on to friends and family, that is much better than simply giving it to the tip and saying, “Over to you—work out which waste stream it goes into.” DEFRA recently published guidance to ensure that local authorities consider certain factors when they review the frequency of residual waste collections, to ensure that reasonable standards are maintained. Part of that is to ensure that there is no increase in fly-tipping, so we expect local authorities to monitor any changes to collection frequencies to ensure that there are no adverse consequences. I hope that that reassures the right hon. Lady that that will be being done.

We recognise the importance of household waste recycling centres. It is down to individual local authorities to handle the operation and management of those in their areas. Previous research found that a link between fly-tipping and booking systems could not be ruled out. However, based on recent data, there appears to be no indication that such a link exists. There are some really interesting behaviour changes going on. Perhaps in the past, if people had to book, that made life more difficult. Perhaps, as we all get a bit more digitally savvy, people are getting used to the new way of doing things. There is conflicting research, but we will keep an eye on what we are hearing and whatever research we have on the ground. It is down to councils to decide whether they will continue to charge for collection of garden waste.

We need to work together to tackle this issue. Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean campaign is under way, and I am sure all Members will be out, as I will be, at a litter-pick. I will be cleaning up in Camden next week, and I will be out in Coventry this weekend, tackling waste one bin bag at a time.

We are also working with the national fly-tipping prevention group, which includes councils, the Environment Agency and police, to look at innovative ways of tackling fly-tipping. For Coventry, we have a Facebook wall of shame, which shows footage from CCTV that has been installed—I can see the hon. Member for Strangford thinking about how this can be used. It basically says, “Does anyone know these criminals? Pass the information on.”

Of course, reducing waste in the first place should mean that there is less of it to be dumped unlawfully. We have our circular economy taskforce of experts from industry, academia, civil society and beyond to help us develop a circular economy strategy for England. We are going to have a series of road maps for the interventions that the Government and others will make to support economic growth as part of our plan for change and to tackle the threats to our environment and circularity, such as those we see with fly-tipping.

The right hon. Lady is right to say that serious organised crime groups are involved. They are taking money at the top end and charging full price, but then doing something different and pocketing the fees. There is an awful lot of organised crime going on, and I am having weekly updates from the Environment Agency about enforcement and what steps we are taking to tackle that serious organised crime. We know that what gets tipped is often landfilled rather than recycled, remanufactured or repurposed.

Wherever people live, whether in a city, a town, a village or the country, they should be able to walk through their area without seeing litter. That includes Parliament; the other day I saw a Costa Coffee cup dumped by one of our Carriage Gates, which deeply annoyed me. People should be able to feel proud of their environment. That is why we are committed to stamping out antisocial behaviour such as fly-tipping from our streets and countryside.

It is time to dump the excuses. Working with councils, regulators and others, we will force the offenders to clean up their mess, we will tighten our systems to put a stop to the waste criminals and, together, we will keep our communities clean.

Question put and agreed to.