LGA hails success of fly-tipping fight

13 Dec 11
Latest figures on fly-tipping show the ‘real impact’ councils are having in tackling illegally deposited waste, according to the Local Government Association.

By Richard Johnstone | 13 December 2011

Latest figures on fly-tipping show the ‘real impact’ councils are having in tackling illegally deposited waste, according to the Local Government Association.

Official figures released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs today reveal that there were nearly 820,000 incidents of fly-tipping reported by English councils in 2010/11.

This represents a 13.5% decrease from the year before, although the department adds that some of this reduction is due to changes in the reporting arrangements.

The cost to councils of clearing illegally dumped waste was down to £41.3m, compared with £45.8m in 2009/10, a reduction of nearly 10%. Almost two thirds (63%) of the fly-tips dealt with involved household waste.

Local authorities carried out around 568,000 enforcement actions to prevent fly-tipping, at an estimated cost of £20.6m.

This represented a 5.8% increase in actions from 2009/10, with the cost of enforcement up more than £1m from £19.1m. There were 2,400 prosecutions in 2010/11, 96% of them resulting in a conviction.

David Parsons, chair of the Local Government Association’s environment board, said that councils ‘know how much people hate seeing this sort of vandalism on their doorsteps’.

He said that councils had taken a range of measures to tackle fly-tipping, including tougher enforcement, more visible deterrents and greater co-ordination with the Environment Agency and the police.

‘People rely upon their local council to keep their neighbourhoods looking clean and tidy. These figures show that the huge amount of effort local authorities put into preventing and tackling fly-tipping is having a real impact.

‘Fewer people are dumping waste, while councils’ success rate at catching out those who do has gone up.’

He also said that authorities had made ‘less money go further’ by developing better ways of clearing up public land.

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