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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of local authority enforcement powers to prevent fly tipping.

Local authorities have a range of enforcement powers to tackle fly-tipping. These include fixed penalty notices of up to £1000, vehicle seizure and prosecution action which can lead to a significant fine or even imprisonment. We encourage councils to make good use of these powers, and we are taking steps to develop statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance to support councils to consistently and effectively exercise their powers. We have also announced a review of their powers to seize and crush vehicles of suspected fly-tippers to identify how we could help councils make better use of this tool.

Research commissioned by Defra in 2023 into the effectiveness of enforcement against littering, fly-tipping and dog fouling is available at: https://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/ProjectDetails?ProjectId=21398. The report was unable to identify any firm conclusions about the effectiveness of enforcement due to data limitations. A more recent assessment of the effectiveness of local authority enforcement powers to prevent fly tipping has not been made.

We have committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up the mess that they have created as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour. We will provide further details on this commitment in due course.