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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to tackle the dumping of waste on farmland.

The Government is committed to tackling fly-tipping in rural and urban areas. Local authorities and the Environment Agency (EA) have a wide range of enforcement powers to tackle fly-tipping and we have recently strengthened these. In 2016 we gave local authorities the power to issue fixed penalty notices for small scale fly-tipping and enhanced the local authorities and EA’s ability to search and seize the vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. We have also worked with the Sentencing Council to strengthen the Sentencing Guideline for environmental offences. The maximum penalties for fly-tipping are imprisonment of up to five years or a potentially unlimited fine.

We are currently consulting on proposals to introduce a new fixed penalty notice of up to £400 for householders who fail in their duty of care and whose waste is fly-tipped. As two-thirds of fly-tipped waste originates from households, the introduction of this penalty along with educational awareness for individuals will help reduce fly-tipping on public and private land.