More than 22,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste have now been removed from the Oxfordshire site, costing the taxpayer £6 million.
As part of the clean-up operation, around 22,105 tonnes of commercial and household waste, including tyres, shredded plastic, and household rubbish, were fully dug up and removed from the site.
Philip Duffy, chief executive of the Environment Agency, said: “Dumping like this needs to be stopped in the first place.”
“To do that we are going upstream, removing criminals and corruption from the waste system; improving the exchange of intelligence between agencies, and revoking the permits of those who do not take adequate care.”
The government has committed to cleaning up some of the country’s ‘most egregious illegal waste sites’, including Bolton House Road in Wigan and Midland Road in Bradford.
The government said the sites were prioritised on scale, risk to nearby communities, environmental damage, and links to persistent non-compliance and organised waste crime.
Duffy told a House of Lords committee that the government had committed £65m towards the project.
The government has committed to recouping the clean-up costs from those responsible for dumping the waste by confiscating their money and assets.
However, figures reported by the BBC show that between January 2021 and March 2026 the Environment Agency only recouped £7.3m using Proceeds of Crime Act (Poca) confiscation orders.
An organised criminal gang is believed to have dumped the waste across 8,000 square metres of land between the A34 and the River Cherwell in Kidlington. Four people have been arrested in connection with the site.
Director of Policy, Communications and External Affairs at the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM), Dan Cooke, told the BBC that criminals could have made well over £500,000 from dumping the waste.
According to eyewitness accounts, illegal dumping occurred on the site every night for months, involving excavators and truckloads of waste.
In June 2025, the local council contacted the Environment Agency when it became aware of illegal activity on the site.
The Environment Agency issued a cease-and-desist letter to the landowner in July that year. The regulator later secured a court order to close all public access to the site and prevent further tipping on 23 October 2025.
The 16-week gap between the cease-and-desist letter and the court order led to criticism from inside the waste sector and from legal professionals.
Environmental law expert Dr Anna Willetts, gunnercook llp, told Circular Online she was surprised the Environment Agency didn’t immediately seek a court order after inspecting the site.
Dr Willetts, a former CIWM President, explained that a Court must hear an application for a Restriction Order within 72 hours.
“The impact caused by delay means that the waste is sitting in place for ever long periods of time, days stretching into weeks and months,” Dr Willetts said.
The Environment Agency confirmed officers continued to visit the site regularly over the summer and claimed that the ‘majority of the waste’ was tipped before it became aware of the continuing illegal operation.
