Local authorities in England dealt with just under 1 million (998,000) fly-tipping incidents for the 2017/18 year, a slight decrease of 1% from the 1,011,000 reported in 2016/17, following annual increases since 2013/14, according to new figures.
Two thirds (66%) of fly-tips involved household waste. Total incidents involving household waste decreased by 4% from 2016/17.
Consistent with previous years, the most common place for fly-tipping to occur was on highways, which accounted for almost half (47%) of total incidents in 2017/18. The number of highway incidents has decreased by 7% from 2016/17.
As in the last few years, the most common size category for fly-tipping incidents in 2017/18 was equivalent to a ‘small van load’ (33% of total incidents), followed by the equivalent of a ‘car boot or less’ (28%).
In 2017/18 34,000 or 4% of total incidents were of ‘tipper lorry load’ size or larger, which is similar to 2016/17. For these large fly-tipping incidents, the cost of clearance to local authorities in England in 2017/18 was £12.2 million, compared with £9.9 million in 2016/17. This increase was driven by an increase in the number of incidents in the largest size category of ‘significant/multi loads’.
Local authorities carried out 494,000 enforcement actions in 2017/18, an increase of 18,000 actions (4%) from 2016/17.
The number of fixed penalty notices issued has continued to increase, up 20% to 69,000 from 2016/17 and up 91% on 2015/16. This is the second most common enforcement action (after investigations), and accounted for 14% of all enforcement actions in 2017/18.
For 2017/18, 44% of local authorities in England voluntarily provided a more detailed breakdown of fixed penalty notices issued. For these local authorities, 11% of fixed penalty notices were issued specifically for small scale fly-tipping, 52% in relation to littering and 37% in relation to other offences.