East of England councils must 'up their game' on fly tipping

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Zero tolerance needed on fly tipping and councils must ‘up their game’ as GMB study shows too few actions by East of England councils on 61,423 Incidents In 2019/20

As well as punishing fly-tippers, councils must make it easy to use recycling and collection schemes for bulk items while pandemic access restrictions on using recycling centres requiring bookings need to be rolled back says GMB London and East of England 

A new study of the latest official data by GMB, the union for refuse and street cleaning workers, shows that the 45 councils in the East of England took 43,024 actions to deal with 61,423 fly-tipping incidents recorded in the region for 2019/20.

Actions on fly-tipping by councils include: warning letters, statutory notices, fixed penalty notices, formal cautions, stop and search, vehicle seizures, injunctions, prosecutions. Overall across the region councils took 43,024 actions. This is seven actions for every ten incidents across the region.

GMB is calling for a uniform policy, across East of England councils, of punishing cowboy builders identified flytipping to confiscate their vehicles. This would send the right message about zero tolerance. 

The study shows that in terms of the number of actions per fly-tipping incidents there is a huge variation. Southend on Sea is the most proactive with nearly five actions per fly-tipping incident. Next is West Suffolk, North Norfolk and Dacorum with more than two and Cambridge with 1.6 actions per fly-tipping incident. Central Bedfordshire, Norwich, Uttlesford, Colchester and Tendering by contrast have five or less actions for every 100 fly-tipping incidents. 

The councils who took most actions were Peterborough 4,563, Southend on Sea 4,125, Basildon 3,700, Dacorum 2,652 and Harlow 2,573. At the of the scale were Central Bedfordshire 0, Uttlesford 13, Tendering 33, Brentwood 53 and Mid Suffolk 56.

Set out in the table below are the figures for the 45 local authorities in the East of England ranked by number of actions per fly-tipping incident. The sources and definitions for the data are set in notes to editors below. 

Table: Fly-tipping incidents and actions reported by East of England local authorities 2019-20.

Warren Kenny, GMB London Regional Secretary, said: 

“Government and local councils have to be more proactive in dealing with fly-tipping incidents. The data for 2019/20 shows far too much variation in the numbers of actions councils take in response to fly-tipping incidents. Some councils take far too little action. Many councils need to up their game on dealing with fly-tipping and fly-tippers.

“There needs to be better education on the costs of dealing with the problem and how people can dispose of rubbish and unwanted items properly.  

“Councils must invest in easy to access recycling and disposal facilities for residents to use and offer accessible collection schemes for bulk items. Recent restrictions on using recycling centres due to the pandemic in terms of capacity and access without bookings need to be rolled back. They must not become permanent or make access to them more difficult.  

“Finally, councils have to firmly clamp down on fly-tipping by larger fines, investment in surveillance equipment and rigorous investigation of incidents and follow up action. Some councils have a poor record on this which encourages an attitude of impunity. A uniform policy, across East of England of punishing cowboy builders identified flytipping to confiscate their vehicles would send the right message. 

We need a policy of zero tolerance with action against fly-tipping on all fronts at all times.” 

ENDS 

Contact: Vaughan West, GMB London Region Political Offer 079 6734 2197 or Press Office 079 7001 9643. 

Notes to editors 

Sources and definitions 

 Fly-tipping incidents and actions reported by East of England local authorities 2019-20, 
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fly-tipping-in-england
Source: Defra, WasteDataFlow

(*) A number of changes to local authorities came into force on the 1st April 2019.  
In the East of England, these changes are:

• East Suffolk - new local authority district (Suffolk Coastal and Waveney districts abolished)

• West Suffolk - new local authority district (Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury districts abolished)

Actions include: warning letters, statutory notices, fixed penalty notices, formal cautions, stop and search, vehicle seizures, injunctions, prosecutions

For the 2019/20 incident data there has also been a change in methodology, whereby the national totals are based on the data as reported by local authorities in WasteDataFlow and only include estimates for non-response. This methodological change has been applied to the 2018/19 to enable comparisons to be made. These changes do not affect the enforcement action and prosecution data 

For the 2019/20 year, Defra undertook a check with all local authorities around the basis of reporting in order to improve transparency in reported data. An additional question was added to WasteDataFlow to capture the reporting basis for each local authority. Around 13% of local authorities reported that they were either just providing figures based on customer reported fly-tips only or just those incidents reported by staff. 

In previous years, estimates were made for ‘all incidents’ for a small number of local authorities where it was known that the local authorities reported figures were not based on ‘all incidents ’. These estimated figures were included in the national incident totals but not in the local authority level dataset.  For 2019/20, for those local authorities that are not reporting ‘all incidents’, no estimates have been made for ‘all incidents’. This was due to the number of local authorities concerned and lack of data to make reliable estimates for ‘all incidents’. This means that the 2019/20 national totals are, as the figures are reported by the local authorities to WasteDataFlow and only include estimates for non-response and missing data.