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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many illegal waste sites are known to the Environment Agency in each English district in the most recent year for which data is available; and what estimate she has made of the total number of large-scale illegal waste sites, including those not officially recorded.

The Environment Agency (EA) has provided the attached dataset which shows the number of illegal wastes sites by Local Authority Area as of 7 October 2025, from the total of 517 sites active at that time.

The EA does not hold a view on what would make a site large scale because it assesses risk posed by sites. There are 151 sites that it considers to be higher risk sites.

The number of illegal waste sites will change as sites are stopped and new sites are found.

The EA is unable to report on anything in relation to sites not officially recorded.