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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help reduce the number of fly-tipping incidents in South East Cornwall constituency.

Fly-tipping is a serious crime which blights local communities and the environment, and we appreciate the difficulty and cost that it poses to landowners.

Local councils are usually best placed to tackle fly-tipping in their areas, and they have a range of enforcement powers to help them do so. These include fixed penalty notices of up to £1000, seizing and crushing of vehicles and prosecution action. We encourage councils to make good use of their enforcement powers and are taking steps to develop new enforcement guidance. We have also announced a review of council powers to seize and crush vehicles of fly-tippers, to identify how we could help them make better use of this tool.

In our manifesto we 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.

In the meantime, Defra continue to chair the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group through which we work with a wide range of stakeholders, such as local authorities and the National Farmers Union, to share good practice on preventing fly-tipping, including on private land. Various practical tools are available from their webpage which is available here.