Fly-tipping: Residential Areas
Debate between Mary Creagh and Ayoub Khan(1 month, 1 week ago)
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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.
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.
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.