Now cases of f ly-tipping hit a million

FLY-TIPPING is ‘rapidly escalating’ with more than a million incidents of rubbish dumped on streets last year, according to official figures.

The majority was made up of household waste – 62 per cent – against a backdrop of more councils collecting rubbish only once a fortnight and increased fees for using public dumps and recycling centres.

English councils reported 1,072,000 incidents in 2018/19, up 8 per cent on the 998,000 cases in 2017/18, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Allison Ogden-Newton, chief executive of environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, said: ‘A national programme to educate the public about the dangers and costs of fly-tipping is needed now as we have the evidence of a serious and rapidly escalating problem in this country in how we dispose of our rubbish.

‘Keep Britain Tidy suspects, bad as these figures are, the reality may be even worse as many incidents of fly-tipping are being categorised as littering so are not being counted.’

Around half of all incidents involved rubbish dumped on roads and pavements. A third of cases were the size of a small van load, with 30 per cent considered to be the equivalent of a ‘car boot or less’. Single items such as mattresses or pieces of furniture made up just under a fifth of cases.

The number of penalty notices issued has continued to increase, up 11 per cent in a year to 76,000 in 2018/19. However, the figures do not include an estimate of how much clearing up all fly-tips costs councils, apart from those incidents classed as the size of a tipper lorry load or larger. These cost local authorities £12.9million in 2018/19 – up from £12.2million in 2017/18.

The Country Land And Business Association, which represents around 30,000 rural businesses, farmers and landowners in England and Wales, says the figures do not reflect the true scale of the crime as they do not include reports of flytipping on privately owned land.

David Renard, environment spokesman for the Local Government Association, said councils were determined to crack down on the problem. He added: ‘The next Government needs to ensure councils have the funding needed to investigate incidents.’