Fly-tipping
Thursday, 22 October 2026
Contributions
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)Labour
5. What steps she is taking to help tackle fly-tipping.
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)Labour
7. What steps she is taking to help tackle fly-tipping.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)Labour
13. What steps she is taking to help tackle fly-tipping.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)Labour
Fly-tipping is unacceptable. It blights communities, harms the environment and imposes significant costs on taxpayers and businesses. Those responsible should be cleaning it up and paying for it. That is why we have strengthened the powers and penalties available to councils, to ensure that vandals face real consequences, and we are consulting on making them clean up their own mess.
I thank the Minister for that response. Fly-tipping is a real scourge for my Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes constituents. Whether it is in alleyways or local beauty spots, it is so disappointing, especially when so many members of the community are involved in doing community clean-ups. As the Minister said, the Government have done a huge amount of work, increasing fines to £5,000 and giving powers to scrap vehicles once they are seized, but those powers are only effective if they are used. Will she join me in urging my Reform-led North East Lincolnshire council to make greater use of these enforcement powers?
My hon. Friend is right to raise that. Her constituents are, understandably, frustrated, and I share her confusion as to why her council does not want to use the powers it has been given to fine fly-tippers, seize their vans and prosecute them. I join her in urging her council to do the job it has been elected to do, and I hope her residents remember this lack of action when it comes to the next election.
Trafalgar Square—not the one down the road, but the much smaller one back home in Erewash—is a private road with a persistent fly-tipping problem. There are signs up that ask people to stop doing it. I have reported it loads of times to the council, and so do local people all the time, but if the piles of bulky waste in the area get cleared, they come back almost immediately, so today I am escalating this. Could the Minister elaborate on how the Government are working to get a grip on fly-tipping, particularly in hotspots like Trafalgar Square in Long Eaton?
I completely understand the frustration of my hon. Friend’s constituents at repeated fly-tipping on private roads. We are taking this seriously. We have increased the maximum fine for offenders to £5,000, and we are working on advising the owners of private land on land security through the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group. We are happy to give that advice to private landowners, but where we find out who is responsible, we will not hesitate in going after them.
Like many other MPs, I am often reporting the worst examples of fly-tipping to our local councils. My most recent case is on Marymead Drive, with boards and tarpaulin thrown under trees and walls graffitied. I expect that Stevenage borough council staff will be on to this as quickly as possible, but they should not have to do it in the first place. What assurances can the Minister give me and the House about the Government’s war on waste crime and whether it will extend to graffiti and reduce these instances of fly-tipping?
It is good to hear about a council being proactive and cleaning up some of this mess. I agree that graffiti and fly-tipping offences are unacceptable. Graffiti is a separate offence from fly-tipping, but local councils can issue fixed penalties of up to £500 for graffiti offences, and we are consulting on powers for councils to use conditional cautions, requiring offenders to clean up their mess and cover the clean-up costs, instead of simply walking away from the damage they cause.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)Conservative
A constituent got in touch with me last week to point out that farmers are often the ones who are left to deal with fly-tipping, but I note in the Government’s response on Tuesday that insurance is one option that could be available. What progress is the Minister making in talking to insurance companies about making fly-tipping part of a routine farm policy that farmers could take out against this scourge?
The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I absolutely sympathise with farmers, who, as he rightly highlighted, often see repeated dumping on their private land. As I mentioned, there is the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group. I meet insurers regularly—in fact, I met them all last week—and I will certainly raise the issue of how we can ensure that farmers get the support they need in having to deal with a problem that is simply not of their making.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)Liberal Democrat
Local authorities will be looking to the Environment Agency to set standards as far as enforcement action is concerned. Trevoole Moor in my constituency is the fifth largest illegal dump in the country, affecting a nature reserve, but the Environment Agency has decided not to take enforcement action. When I discussed this with the Environment Agency, it said that it deals with these matters on a case-by-case basis. Will the Minister ensure that the guidance the Environment Agency uses is published, so that we can properly understand where and why it makes these decisions?
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. We have these illegal sites around the country; we are focusing heavily on the prevention side, before crimes are committed. We have already published the toughest ever waste crime action plan, given £45 million extra to the Environment Agency for frontline enforcement, granted new powers and expanded the joint unit for waste crime. We are going after prevention and are trying to clean up as many sites as possible, but fundamentally, we believe it is the polluter and not the taxpayer who should pay for the clean-up, and that is always the first route that we will pursue.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)Conservative
Waste crime and fly-tipping affect rural communities across Somerset. While I welcome the action that the Government are taking, does the Minister agree that the very substantial increases that we have seen in landfill tax enable rogue waste operators to undercut legitimate businesses? Does she accept that those substantial tax increases are fuelling waste crime, and will she join me in asking the Chancellor to cut those taxes?
The main problem that we have in the country is the serious organised crime behind some of these criminal activities, and that is exactly what we are going after through the new crackdown group, on which we are working with the National Crime Agency. We are escalating this issue and taking it extremely seriously because, as the hon. Gentleman said, we want to support legitimate businesses that are doing the right thing and get the criminals out of this industry.
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5423132.