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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to help tackle the crime of fly tipping in Epping Forest.

Local councils are responsible for tackling fly-tipping in their area and have a range of enforcement powers to help them do so. These include fixed penalty notices of up to £1000 and prosecution action. The Government is taking steps to develop statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance to support councils to effectively exercise their existing powers. We are also reviewing council powers to seize and crush vehicles of fly-tippers, to identify how we could better help them use this tool.

Defra chairs the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group through which we work with a wide range of stakeholders to share good practice on preventing fly-tipping.

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.

The Environment Agency regulates large scale fly-tips that meet the criteria of being over 20 tonnes, consist of hazardous material, or are linked to organised crime. Within the Epping Forest constituency, there are not currently any reports of large-scale fly-tips that meet these criteria. It is worth noting that there are two illegal waste sites where active clearing is currently taking place under the guidance of the Environment Agency.