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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to help ensure reliable and consistent statistical reporting of fly tipping incidents.

Defra publishes statistics on fly-tipping incidents as reported by local authorities in England. The intention is to capture all fly tipping incidents on public land.

All local authorities have been issued with detailed guidance on how to report fly-tipping and training is also offered. The guidance sets out what should be recorded on the database. Recently, the guidance has been amended to reinforce to local authorities that incidents from all sources should be reported. In addition, data verification and quality assurance are carried out by Defra.

Defra collects information on the basis of reporting in order to improve transparency in the reported data. Further information can be found in the methodology section of the Statistical Notice.