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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of penalties for fly-tipping in reducing the occurance of that offence.

Fly-tipping is an unacceptable blight on local communities and the environment, and in its manifesto, the Government committed to increase the penalties for fly-tipping.

Local authorities have a range of powers available to tackle fly-tipping. These include the power to issue fixed penalty notices (FPNs) of up to £400 for fly-tipping offences, including to those caught fly-tipping and householders who pass their waste to a fly-tipper. Local authorities also have enhanced powers to search and seize vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. Recent figures showed that there were 76,000 fixed penalty notices issued by Local Authorities in 2018/19, up by 11% from 2017/18.

Local authorities also have the ability to take those accused of fly-tipping to court. If a prosecution is successful, then a fly-tipper can receive a fine of up to £50,000 or 12 months imprisonment if convicted in a Magistrates' Court, or an unlimited fine and up to 5 years imprisonment if convicted in a Crown Court. Local authorities carried out a total of 2,397 prosecutions for fly-tipping offences in England in 2018/19, an increase of 7% on 2017/18. The value of total fines increased by 29% to £1,090,000 compared to 2017/18. The success rates for prosecution actions against fly-tipping are consistently above 95% and have been since records began in 2007/08.

The Resources and Waste Strategy (RWS) published in December 2018 includes a number of commitments to improve sentencing of fly-tippers, including working with the Sentencing Council to increase magistrates’ awareness of the prevalence and importance of waste crime; helping local authorities improve the quality of cases; and ensuring the Environmental Offences Definitive guideline is kept up to date and magistrates are effectively trained on it. Defra will continue this work to help to secure tougher penalties in line with our manifesto commitment.

The Environment Bill also delivers commitments set out in the RWS. The Bill amends the Environment Act 1995 to make it easier for enforcing officers to search premises to seize evidence. Additionally, the Bill ensures that FPN levels can be revised as needed to keep them at an adequate level to be an effective and proportionate enforcement tool for local authorities.