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 is taking to work with local authorities to increase the number of successful prosecutions for fly-tipping.

We are committed to tackling fly-tipping as set out in the Government’s manifesto. In May this year we gave local authorities in England the power to issue fixed penalty notices for small-scale fly-tipping. These new enforcement tools provide local authorities with an alternative to prosecutions and will assist them to take a proportionate enforcement response.

This builds on other actions to tackle fly-tipping, which has included:

1. Working with the Sentencing Council on its guidelines for sentencing for environmental offences.

2. Making it easier for vehicles suspected of being involved in waste crime to be stopped, searched and seized.

3. Working in partnership through the Defra-chaired National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group to prevent and tackle illegal dumping. The group has representatives from central and local Government, enforcement authorities, the waste industry and private landowners. The group works to promote and disseminate good practice in the prevention, reporting, investigation and clearance of fly-tipped waste.

4. Publishing a series of fly-tipping prevention guides for householders, businesses, landowners and local authorities, including Fly-tipping responsibilities: Guide for local authorities and land managers. These documents can be viewed at www.tacklingflytipping.com.

5. Publishing a revised, waste Duty of Care Code of Practice that provides guidance to local authorities, regulators, the waste industry and all those that produce, keep, import, treat, have control or dispose of controlled waste on how to comply with their Duty of Care obligations.