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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to help tackle commercial fly-tipping involving construction and demolition waste.

This Government recently announced plans to move the regulation of waste carriers, brokers and dealers from a light-touch registration system into environmental permitting. This will mean that people who transport or control more than a certain volume of construction or demolition waste, which is produced by themselves in the course of their business, will be required to apply for the relevant standard rules permit. The reform will enhance the resources and capabilities available to the Environment Agency to take regulatory action and make it harder for rogue operators to escape detection.

Local authorities also have enforcement powers to help tackle fly-tipping. We are taking steps to develop statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance for local authorities and have also announced a review of their powers to seize and crush vehicles of suspected fly-tippers to identify how we could help them make better use of this tool.

We committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up their mess and will provide further details on this commitment in due course.

Defra chairs the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group through which we work with local authorities, the Environment Agency and others to share good practice on preventing fly-tipping. Various practical tools are available at: https://www.keepbritaintidy.org/national-fly-tipping-prevention-group#.