Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many unlicensed scrap metal sites have been closed by local authorities in each of the last five years.

The Government supported the introduction of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 (“the 2013 Act”) which provided better regulation of the metal recycling sector, including making it an offence for a scrap metal dealer to operate without a licence.

Under the 2013 Act, a scrap metal dealer who operates without a licence is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale. The Sentencing Council are responsible for setting the maximum statutory fine limits and, for offences committed after 13 March 2015, the maximum fine for Level 5 is unlimited.

The Home Office collects information from police forces on the number of offences that involved the theft of metal for its scrap metal value. These data are published annually by the Office for National Statistics and can be found in the ‘Property Crime tables’ here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/focusonpropertycrimeappendixtables. The Government does not hold data on the number of unlicensed scrap metal sites that have been closed by local authorities.