Figures have revealed that Councils had to deal with more than 1 million incidents of fly-tipping in the last year alone, describing an upward trend as the problem continues to rise.
Local Authorities reported around 1,072,000 incidents throughout 2018-2019. Figures released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) have shown that is an 8% rise on the 998,000 cases from the previous year.
Nearly two-thirds of the cases that occurred had involved household rubbish, ranging from:
Most commonly, the rubbish was dumped onto the roads and pavements, this accounting for more than half of the incidents that were reported. A third of the incidents were around the size of a small van-load (30% was the equivalent of a 'car boot' or less), whilst the presence of single items, like mattresses or a piece of furniture, was only around a fifth.
The rubbish that was illegally dumped included tens of thousands of cases of demolition and construction waste, as well as white goods, garden waste and electrical items. DEFRA urged people to take care of the data and its authenticity, as many Local Authorities have recently changed the way that they record and report fly tipping in the past few years.
These statistics do suggest however, that the problem is on the rise, and risks returning to levels we have not seen for almost a decade. The figures also no longer include an estimate of how much it costs Councils to clear up the fly-tipping, apart from the small number of incidents that were classed as the size of a tipper lorry-load or even those that were larger. These type of incidents cost around £12.9 million in total from this past year, which has increased from the previous year's £12.2 million.
As part of the efforts to attack the problem head on, Local Authorities carried out almost half a million enforcement actions - these ranged from investigations, to issuing fixed penalties, or persecuting prosecutions. The number of penalty notices has also continued to rise, up by 11% in the past year to 76,000, this includes the fines for both fly-tipping and littering that is associated with fly-tipping.
