Only 5pc of fly-tipping prosecuted by ‘toothless’ waste crime body

PROSECUTIONS for rubbish dumping fell by nearly 95 per cent in a decade as the agency fighting waste crime was left “toothless” and “criminals and cowboys take us all for a ride”, MPS have said.

The number of prosecutions for waste crime by the Environment Agency has dropped from nearly 800 in 2007-8 to about 50 in 2017-18, according to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO).

Despite the agency identifying 632 illegal waste sites in 2020-21, only 28, or 5 per cent, of cases ended in prosecution. Nearly 90 per cent of the agency’s actions involved merely issuing advice and guidance or sending warning letters to offenders, the NAO report said.

Industry insiders suggested Environment Agency staff were too scared to investigate and pursue prosecutions into organised crime gangs that had turned waste into the “new narcotics”.

There are about 60 organised crime gangs monitored by police and the Environment Agency extensively involved in other criminal activity, much of it in money laundering.

“Waste crime is increasingly dominated by organised criminal gangs, but the Environment Agency is fighting a losing battle,” Dame Meg Hillier, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said. “With only £17 million a year to spend on enforcement, it is seen as toothless.

“Government can’t continue to let these criminals and cowboys take us all for a ride ... aside from being unsightly and polluting, it [waste crime] costs the economy almost £1 billion a year,” she said. Fly-tipping has been increasing over the past decade with 1.13 million incidents dealt with by local authorities in England in 2020-21, the NAO report said. It added that large rises in the rates of landfill tax had increased returns for criminals, while reducing the amount sent to landfill by 75 per cent between 2010 and 2021.

Up to a million cases of fly-tipping went unpunished in 2020-1, according to analysis by the Liberal Democrats.

Jacob Hayler, executive director of the Environmental Services Association, an industry body, said: “The findings of the NAO report illustrate perfectly why the waste sector is viewed as a soft target by criminals ... it is very disappointing to see the number of prosecutions has dropped considerably while the incidences of waste crime continued to rise.”

Sir James Bevan, chief executive of the Environment Agency, said: “We have created a robust new strategy which is intelligence-led, collaborative and high-tech, focusing on combating the worst criminals. We now share intelligence on criminals with our partners, resulting in more than 2,500 illegal waste sites being shut down permanently in the past three years.”