Fly-tipping policy

Feedback from local authorities indicates that all over the country there are individuals and businesses routinely collecting waste without the mandatory waste-carrier licence. We believe that only a national campaign with a unique brand will help raise public consciousness about everyone’s responsibility for taking care of their own waste.

CrimeNotToCare is an off-the-shelf campaign capable of delivery via a range of digital, print and face-to-face channels, based on our most up-to-date research. Participating local authorities will be supplied with a range of materials that can promote the duty of care via local media and include information about local services.

Any strategy to reduce offending makes it easy for people to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing. We think the Government has a role to play here in supporting local authorities. Every year more than £1 billion in Landfill Tax is collected - we call on the Government to use a proportion of this income to support and improve the current recycling infrastructure, ensuring that closures and restrictions on use are avoided, and also avoid the additional costs of fly-tipping.

Analysis of fly-tipping incidents and the actions undertaken by local authorities suggests a range of current approaches to enforcement. We will extend the application of existing good practice, develop new approaches and encourage a more consistent approach to enforcement across local authorities. This will increase the risk to fly-tippers, catch and prosecute more offenders and discourage others. We will develop a regularly updated online guide to good practice, extend the roll-out of our Enforcement Academy and explore the uptake and impact of current interventions.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) stresses the range of impacts of fly-tipping, stating that it is “a significant blight on local environments; a source of pollution; a potential danger to public health and hazard to wildlife and a nuisance. It also undermines legitimate waste businesses where unscrupulous operators undercut those operating within the law”.

Because of the range of impacts of fly-tipping, we are calling on the Sentencing Council to undertake a review of the application of the Environmental Offences Definitive Guideline and collect data on sentencing in both the Crown Court and magistrates’ courts.

We are also calling on the Magistrates’ Association to ensure its members are fully aware of the requirements of the Environmental Offences Definitive Guideline and make full use of their sentencing powers to provide a real deterrent against fly-tipping.

We will review the uptake of fixed penalty notices for flytipping to determine whether it is effectively removing the need for local authorities to prosecute for minor fly-tipping offences.

In 2014/15 almost 150,000 items of furniture and white goods were fly-tipped. This is an illustration of the consequences of our current linear economy.

We will call on Government to look at encouraging manufacturers and retailers to bear some responsibility for the cost of collecting and recycling large used products, such as mattresses, sofas and white goods, and to fully implement the EU Circular Economy Package.

While we have evidence about where and when fly-tipping is happening, we have less evidence about why it is happening, including insights into the triggers and barriers to different fly-tipping behaviours.

Our Centre for Social Innovation seek partners to work with us, so we can develop and test local solutions to the growing problem of fly-tipping. We believe that the insights gained from targeted research, combined with our expertise in behavioural science, will lead to local campaigns and interventions that will significantly reduce fly-tipping. Where interventions prove to be successful, we will scale these nationally with a range of partners, including our local authority network.