Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department has taken to reduce fly-tipping and strengthen the power of local authorities to prevent fly-tipping.

We encourage local councils to make good use of their enforcement powers, which include fixed penalty notices of up to £1000, seizing and crushing of vehicles and prosecution action.

We are taking steps to develop statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance to support councils to more consistently, appropriately and effectively exercise these existing powers.  We are also conducting a review of council powers to seize and crush vehicles of fly-tippers, to identify how we could help them make better use of this tool.

In our manifesto we committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up the mess that they have created. We will provide further details on this commitment in due course.

In the meantime, Defra continues to chair the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group through which we work with a wide range of stakeholders, such as local authorities, National Farmers Union and the Environment Agency, to share good practice on preventing fly-tipping. Various practical tools are available from their webpage: https://nftpg.com/

In addition, under our reforms, waste carriers, brokers, dealers will need to apply for a full environmental permit giving the regulator more powers and resources to ensure compliance, whilst making it easier for householders to identify legitimate waste services.