Waste Disposal: Crime

(asked on 25th April 2019) - View Source

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 tackle waste crime including (a) illegal exports of waste, (b) fly-tipping and (c) the burning of waste.


Answered by
Thérèse Coffey Portrait
Thérèse Coffey
This question was answered on 30th April 2019

Last year, the Environment Agency issued 158 stop notices prohibiting the export of unsuitable waste. It stopped 367 containers of waste destined for illegal export at ports and intervened upstream to prevent 8,974 tonnes of waste from reaching our ports. Any UK operators found to be illegally exporting waste can face severe sanctions – from financial penalties up to imprisonment.

In the Resources and Waste Strategy, published in December last year, we stated that we are exploring ways to further address the illegal shipment of waste, for example through increased monitoring of international waste shipments and the introduction of a system for exporters to cover costs of waste repatriation where needed.

It is illegal to dispose of waste in a manner likely to cause pollution to the environment or harm to human health. This includes both fly-tipping and the burning of waste. We have given the Environment Agency an extra £60 million to tackle waste crime since 2014.

In January we gave local authorities the power to issue fixed penalties to householders who fail in their duty of care and give waste to fly-tippers. This built on powers given in 2016 to hand out financial penalties to fly-tippers themselves, and in 2015 to strengthen local authorities’ ability to search and seize the vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. The latest figures show no increase in the number of incidents dealt with by local authorities for the first time in five years during 2017/18.

The Resources and Waste Strategy also contains commitments to reform the existing exemptions regime to prevent the use of exemptions in hiding illegal activity, such as misuse of the D7 exemption for burning waste in the open, to toughen penalties for waste criminals and to create a Joint Unit for Waste Crime which will coordinate a multi-agency response to the most serious cases.

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