‘Boots on the ground’ will sort out the most serious illegal waste sites, says the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in its Waste Crime Action Plan about the UK Government’s response to serious waste crime in England.
In a foreword to the document, Emma Reynolds, Secretary of State for the Environment, said: “From fly‑tipping that scars our streets and green spaces to organised criminals exploiting the waste sector for profit, these offences damage the environment, threaten public safety and undercut honest businesses. Communities and businesses should not have to put up with this. Tackling waste crime is complex and deep-rooted cross-government work – it cannot be solved overnight – but we are determined to make sustained progress.”
Fly-tippers, termed ‘waste criminals’ are causing serious harm, according to the document; such crime ‘has escalated into a more sophisticated, more damaging and costly criminal enterprise’. Promised is ‘coordinated and targeted action across government, regulators, industry and local partners’; and a ‘zero-tolerance approach’. The plan concludes: “Waste crime has grown more organised, more sophisticated and more damaging. This government’s response is growing to match it.”
Regulation
Defra, with the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is replacing paper-based methods for monitoring waste movements with digital waste tracking. This will provide environmental regulators with a single UK-wide platform to track waste movements in near real-time, the plan says.
Enforcement
As for enforcement, the Environment Agency is creating a Operational Waste Intelligence and Analysis Unit to bring together satellite, drone and other visual imagery, financial and criminal data and other intelligence in one place. While a Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC) taking in regional environment watchdogs, police forces and the National Crime Agency dates from 2020, the document admits that waste crime has evolved and expanded since. The plan admits that the Environment Agency’s enforcement powers ‘are limited by fragmented environmental legislation’. Defra, with the Home Office, will ‘explore’ how the Agency’s powers to address waste crime can be bolstered.
Tech
The document admits that the Agency ‘has struggled to build an understanding of the scale and breadth of waste shipments due to a lack of data’. The Agency has 33 drone pilots now able to investigate waste crime. Some drones will soon carry Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), enabling the Agency to create detailed maps of illegal waste sites; and to detect changes to topography, height or volumes of waste that indicate changes to illegal waste dumps.
Punishment
As for punishment of those caught, the plan speaks of how under new powers, drivers will be awarded penalty points on their driving licences for fly-tipping offences. The document adds: “Defra will soon consult on giving local authorities the powers to issue fly-tippers with conditional cautions, one of a range of pre-court community-based sanctions. These cautions could see offenders complete up to 20 hours of unpaid work, cleaning our streets or parks, and pay back the cost of cleaning up the waste that they have dumped on public land. If an offender admits to the crime, agrees to the caution and complies with the conditions, they will not face prosecution.”
Defra is to look into an insurance model for landowners to be indemnified against illegal waste dumping on their land.
For the plan in full visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/waste-crime-action-plan.
Comments
Sarah Lee, Policy Director at the Countryside Alliance, said: “Funding uplifts and new powers are positive, but unless this plan is backed by sustained investment, proper coordination between the Environment Agency, police and HMRC, and an emphasis on stopping offences before they occur, it risks being another announcement that fails to deliver real impact on the ground. People across the countryside want to see criminals stopped before sites get out of control, not just cleaned up afterwards.” As she pointed out at some large dumps as mentioned in the plan, at Sheffield, Hyndburn and Wigan, and Kidlington in Oxfordshire, the dumping is in the tens of thousands of tonnes. The Alliance calls for more work, such as intelligence sharing between regulators, police and HM Revenue and Customs.
Among Labour politicians welcoming the plan, Tom Renhard, Leader of Bristol Labour (the city council is in Green Party political control) said: “Fly-tipping is a filthy scourge on our community and under Labour we just won’t stand for it.”
Meanwhile, the latest official statistics covering England show that fly-tipping, largely of household waste as dealt with by local government, has increased.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Anti-fly-tipping signage, Greenwich.
