The government has been branded “complacent” over rising waste crime, with the House of Lords warning that organised gangs are profiting while rural communities and the environment suffer. Ministers have largely ignored calls for tougher regulation and faster prosecutions, offering only vague promises. The Countryside Alliance echoes the Lords concerns and will keep pressing for urgent action to protect the countryside. 

On 28 October the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee wrote to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Emma Reynolds MP, following its inquiry into serious and organised waste crime. As reported in today’s Daily Telegraph (11 November) the Secretary of State responded on 9 December. The Chair of the Lords Committee, Baroness Sheehan, has described the government’s response as “complacent” and giving “succour to the organised criminal gangs who are profiteering from waste crime and inflicting misery on impacted communities across the country whilst damaging precious environments”.  

As a founding member of the National Rural Crime Network and member of the National Fly-tipping Prevention Group, the Alliance has long been a leading voice in the campaign against the illegal disposal of waste as well as other crimes that blight rural communities. We share the Committee’s view that waste crime is “critically under-prioritised despite its significant environmental, economic and social costs” and their concern “about the demonstrable inadequacy of the current approach to tackling waste crime”. The Committee was also extremely critical of failings on the part of the Environment Agency to pursue repeated reports of serious waste crime or to utilise its powers effectively to stop the mass illegal dumping of waste and bring “effective, timely and successful prosecutions”. The Committee was also “unimpressed with the lack of interest shown by the police in filling their role” and noted that organised waste crime is a “subset of, and gateway to, other forms of serious and organised crime including drugs and money laundering”. 

In its response, the government largely rejected the Committee’s recommendations, relying instead on setting out what it is already doing. However, it is clear that what is currently being done is not enough to address the scale of the problem and that even that is taking too long to deliver. It is also clear that funding remains inadequate. Ironically, where the government does agree with the Committee is over the need for regulatory changes to the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime and to the waste permit exemptions system, but all the Secretary of State can confirm is that these reforms are “priorities within Defra’s regulatory pipeline” and the necessary legislation will be put before Parliament “as soon as parliamentary time allows”. This is hardly reassuring. As Tim Bonner, Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, has noted:

“It is particularly disappointing that the Secretary of State cannot give a commitment to introducing legislative changes which everyone agrees are necessary. This frustration is exacerbated when Ministers are prioritising other measures which will bring no benefit to the countryside”. 

Baroness Sheehan will be writing again to the Secretary of State and we will keep you updated as this story unfolds. The Alliance will continue to press the government to take the action needed now, rather than prioritising measures that do nothing for the countryside. It is about time Defra remembered the ‘rural affairs’ part of its name.

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The Committee’s letter can be read here and the government’s response here.