Countryside Alliance - love the countryside

• The number of incidents reported by Local Authorities and the Environment Agency totalled nearly 2.5 million.

• The cost of clearing these incidents was nearly £100 million

• There is a new incident of fly-tipping every 12 seconds and the cost to the public purse stands at around £72 a minute.

• Over half (56%) of fly-tipping incidents reported were in alleyways.
  

• Black bags full of domestic rubbish account for 63% of all fly-tipping.
  

• The number of actions taken by Local Authorities and the Environment Agency came to around 500,000 at a total cost of nearly £17m.

• Local authorities reported 76,428 hours of surveillance undertaken at a cost of £243,836.

• Each one of these 496,798 actions by the authorities cost the tax-payer about £33 per incident, which meant that the total amount spent on actions in 05/06 was nearly £17m.

• Last year there were just 24,460 prosecutions.  Out of the 2,425,081 fly-tipping incidents for this period, this means that just 1 in every 100 fly-tipping incident were prosecuted.

• In February 2007 polling commissioned by the Countryside Alliance showed that 74% people believe that fly-tipping is the greatest abuse of the countryside.  Participants were asked what they thought was the greatest abuse of the countryside.

The Law

The Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 (CNEA) gives local authorities and the Environment Agency powers to tackle fly-tipping and the courts the ability to impose penalties.

Fly-tipping is a criminal offence. The CNEA increased the penalties for dumping waste in England and Wales – fly-tippers can now be fined up to £50,000 and/or six months imprisonment in Magistrates’ Courts and face unlimited fines in higher courts, as well as community punishment orders or prison sentences of up to five years.

Those convicted of fly-tipping offences can now be made to pay the costs of enforcement and investigation, as well as the clean-up costs.  It is also an offence to permit or authorise fly-tipping on land where a Waste Management Licence is not held.  Where fly-tipping involves the use of a vehicle, the driver can be prosecuted, as can the owner of the vehicle and the police have powers to seize vehicles used for fly-tipping.