During a parliamentary debate, Sir Gavin Williamson demanded greater punitive action be taken against fly tippers, calling for harsher fines as a disincentive.
Sir Gavin called on the Under Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Robbie Moore, to push for an increase in the fines currently issued to those who offend, from £1000 to £3000. Sir Gavin argued that more needed to be done by local councils who were failing to use prosecution powers despite thousands of fly-tipping incidents across Staffordshire. In the West Midlands in 2020 alone there were 19,517 incidents, yet only 124 fines issued. By increasing the charge of fixed penalty notices at the same time as instructing councils to pursue offences till prosecution, Sir Gavin argued that people would be disincentivised to discard waste onto public land.
Fly-tipping is the illegal dumping of waste, usually by the side of public roads, that often strays further onto public land, becoming dangerous to wildlife and harmful to the environment. The estimated cost of fly tipping to the UK was £392 million in 2018-19. In rural areas fly-tipping is especially destructive to livestock, and 80 percent of farmers in the UK say that they have been affected by fly-tipping on their land. Moreover, in 2022, clearing fly-tipping cost South Staffordshire tax payers more than £100,000. This issue can only be rectified by local councils, who have the power to provide a real disincentive through prosecution, but do not use it.
Sir Gavin said: “So often people are literally dumping waste, especially in the countryside, on an industrial scale, costing local authorities across the country hundreds of thousands of pounds—indeed, millions of pounds. The deterrent is not there, so does the hon. Lady agree that increasing quite dramatically the fixed penalty notice that local authorities can charge the people they catch would help, but that we should also send a message to magistrates, so that people know that fly-tipping is not worth it, because when they are taken to court—as South Staffordshire Council has done—they will be hit with very hard penalties?”
He later added: “I thank the Minister for pointing out that the amount councils can charge in a fixed-penalty fine has gone up. Would the Minister look at that, so that instead of £600 it could be £2,000 or £3,000 and is a real disincentive to fly-tipping?”
