Written Question·Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs·UIN 90869

Fly-tipping: Ely and East Cambridgeshire

Tabled: 13 November 2025

Answered: 20 November 2025

Question

Charlotte Cane

Liberal Democrat — Ely and East Cambridgeshire

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what data her Department holds on the number of cases of illegal dumping of waste in Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency in each of the last five years.

Answer

Mary Creagh

Local authorities in England are required to report fly-tipping incidents and enforcement action to Defra, which the department have published annually since 2012, at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fly-tipping-in-england. This data is not available at a constituency level and excludes the majority of private-land incidents. Data for the 2024/25 reporting year is still being collected.

The Environment Agency (EA) investigates fly tipping where the waste is more than 20 tonnes, a specified amount of hazardous waste, or is suspected to be linked to organised crime. From quarter 1 of 2020/21 to present there have been 9 cases of Illegal dumping which fall under the EA’s remit in the Ely and East Cambridgeshire Constituency Area.

For each year, they are as follows:

2020/21 – 1
2021/22 – 0
2022/23 – 0
2023/24 – 3
2024/25 – 4
2025/26 – 1 (to date)

Please note that these reports of illegal waste dumping exclude those which may be reported to the EA but fall within the remit of local authorities (East Cambridgeshire District Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council). Those are deemed as local cases of ‘fly-tipping’.