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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 25 November to Question 92922 on Fly-tipping, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of a single responsible body to receive and investigate incidents of fly-tipping, as called for by the Hon. Member for St Albans and Hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted in their letter dated 19 September 2025.

We have not made an assessment of the potential merits of a single responsible body to receive and investigate incidents of fly-tipping.

Local councils are responsible for tackling fly-tipping in their area and have a range of enforcement powers to help them do so. These include fixed penalty notices of up to £1000, seizing and crushing of vehicles and prosecution action. We encourage councils to make good use of their enforcement powers and are taking steps to develop statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance to support councils to consistently, appropriately and effectively exercise these existing powers.  We are also conducting a review of council powers to seize and crush vehicles of fly-tippers, to identify how we could help them make better use of this tool.

In our manifesto we committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up the mess that they have created. We will provide further details on this commitment in due course.

In the meantime, Defra continues to chair the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group (NFTPG), through which we work with a wide range of interested parties such as local councils, the Environment Agency, National Farmers Union and National Police Chiefs Council, to promote and disseminate good practice with regards to preventing fly-tipping.