Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what her most recent annual estimate is for the amount of waste deposited illegally across England and Wales.

Waste is a devolved matter and the information provided in this answer is for England only.

The Environment Agency (EA) focuses on tackling large-scale waste crime in England, often linked to organised criminal activity while fly-tipping is managed by local authorities.

The EA has no estimate of the total amount of waste deposited illegally each year - by its nature waste crime is hidden and so inherently difficult to measure. The EA estimates that the amount of waste deposited in illegal waste sites which came to their attention in 2025 was 845,906 tonnes. In addition to this, waste will have been deposited during 2025 at sites which came to EA’s attention in earlier years. This waste is of varying types, with significantly different environmental impacts. As these are estimates the true figure may be more or less. The estimates only relate to those sites of which the EA is aware.

Defra does not have an estimate for the total amount of fly-tipped waste in England annually. However, local authorities in England are required to report fly-tipping incidents to Defra, which are published annually at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fly-tipping-in-england. These figures are separate to the large-scale incidents dealt with by the EA, and we expect that they exclude the majority of private-land incidents.