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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps she has taken to help tackle waste crime in Selby and Ainsty constituency.

The Government is committed to tackling waste crime, which is a blight on our local communities and the environment and damages legitimate businesses. We have strengthened regulators' powers, are tightening the law and have increased the Environment Agency's budget by £10 million per year to make it harder for rogue operators to find work in the sector and easier for regulators to take action against criminals. The Prime Minister’s Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan set out how we will support councils across the country to take tougher action against those who fly-tip such as by raising the upper limit on fixed penalty notices to £1,000, which we did earlier this year.

The Environment Agency’s Yorkshire Area has a dedicated team focussed on the investigation of waste crime across Yorkshire. All reports of waste related crime are recorded on the Environment Agency National Incident Recording System and investigated in order of seriousness.

As of 1 September 2023, the Environment Agency’s Yorkshire team is dealing with 37 active illegal waste sites across Yorkshire with 10 ongoing serious and significant investigations. None of these are in the Selby area. The team has completed six investigations into illegal waste sites and these have been authorised for prosecution and are being progressed. One of these is in the Selby area although the site is no longer active. Since September 2022, the Environment Agency has closed 34 illegal sites in Yorkshire.