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 reduce (a) fly-tipping and (b) the impacts of fly-tipping on (i) natural environments and (ii) natural environments in rural areas.

We are encouraging councils to take tougher action against fly-tippers. Under the Prime Minister’s Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan we have significantly increased the upper limit on fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping to £1,000 and the income from these penalties must now be reinvested in enforcement or cleaning up sites affected by fly-tipping, such as natural environments.

We appreciate the difficulty that fly-tipping poses to landowners. We are working with stakeholders, such as the National Farmers Union and local authorities, to share good practice including how to prevent fly-tipping on private land. We are also currently funding a post within the new National Rural Crime Unit to explore how the police’s role in tacking fly-tipping can be optimised, with a focus on rural areas.

Across three rounds of our fly-tipping grant scheme, we have now awarded nearly £2.2m to help more than 50 councils tackle fly-tipping at known hot-spots, including in rural areas, such as by installing CCTV. In addition to supporting more infrastructure, the latest round of projects will also help to raise awareness of the household waste duty of care to reduce the chance of waste getting into the hands of fly-tippers in the first place. A selection of case studies from earlier projects have been published so that others can learn about those interventions which were most successful. These are available here.