Farmers surveyed on waste crime

The Environment Agency has launched its third National Waste Crime Survey, seeking insight from farmers, landowners, the waste sector and others to help shape efforts to combat this insidious criminality. The survey is exploring the scale of English waste crime, how to create an effective deterrent and how successful the Agency and its partners have been at preventing it. It revealed that waste crime is now estimated to cost the English economy £1 billion a year. 

Defra last issued annual figures on local authority fly-tipping records in January 2024 covering 2022-23, but these had to be updated in March after eight councils’ enforcement data were found to be incorrect. Figures for 2023-24 have yet to be reported. 

The 2022-23 data showed that while the overall number of incidents had fallen by 1% from the previous year, at 1.08 million they remained higher than the levels seen before the pandemic. Local authorities had carried out 532,000 enforcement actions, an increase of 24,000 (5%), which had unfortunately needed to be revised downwards from the initial report of a 6% increase. 

While welcoming the overall reduction, the Countryside Alliance expressed our alarm that littering on footpaths and bridleways, which disproportionately impacts the countryside, rose by 7% to 181,000 cases. Both the number and clearing costs of large fly-tipping incidents also increased. Incidents of ‘tipper lorry load’ size or larger rose by 13% to 42,000 cases, and the total cost to local authorities of clearing them went up by £2.5 million to £13.2 million. Notably, this does not include costs to private landowners. Our own 2023 Rural Crime Survey identified fly-tipping as respondents’ second-top priority for police to tackle, behind only thefts of agricultural machinery. 

As a member of the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group, the Countryside Alliance has striven to grow awareness that littering and fly-tipping are not victimless crimes. As we said in response to last year’s data: 

“[I]t is a scourge on our natural environment and a blight on the farms these criminals still too often target. Farmers and other private landowners who fall victim are required by law to clear their land and bear the costs of doing so, which can be especially ruinous at a time when they are already under pressure from shifts in the agricultural subsidy regime.” 

 With the looming Family Farm Tax and the recent spate of organised hare poaching that pressure has only grown, further raising the urgency of tackling and, ultimately, eliminating illegal dumping on farms. 

We urge all farmers and landowners who have been affected by fly-tipping to complete the survey and ensure the Environment Agency can take their experience into account as it shapes its priorities for cracking down on waste crime.