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

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on (a) ensuring adequate support for local authorities to tackle fly-tipping and (b) ensuring that persistent offenders are either fined or prosecuted.

Local authorities have a wide range of enforcement powers to tackle fly-tipping and we have recently strengthened these. In 2016 we gave local authorities the power to issue fixed penalty notices for small scale fly-tipping and enhanced local authorities’ ability to search and seize the vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. In January this year, we introduced further financial penalties to crack down on fly-tipping giving local authorities the power to issue penalties of up to £400 to householders who fail to pass their waste to a licensed carrier and whose waste is then found fly-tipped. We will also support local authorities in increasing householders’ awareness of their duty of care to ensure their waste is disposed of appropriately.

In our Resources and Waste Strategy for England, we have committed to develop a fly-tipping toolkit which will cover how local authorities can set up and run an effective fly-tipping partnership and how to present robust cases to court to ensure tougher penalties. The Strategy also sets out how we will work with the court system to further strengthen the sentences of fly-tippers to ensure they act as a suitable deterrent.