Flytipping down across England

Flytipping, otherwise known as dumping, on public land across England has decreased by 7.5 percent in the last year, according to new figures published by Defra.

As well as flytipping decreasing overall, enforcement action and successful prosecution for flytipping increased over previous years.

The key findings in the report are:

• Flytipping on public land is down overall by 7.5 percent.
• The total number of flytipping incidents recorded, excluding Liverpool City Council (LCC), was 1.24 million in 2007-08.
• A Twenty-six percent increase in the number of enforcement actions issued by local authorities.
• There were 1,871 prosecutions for flytipping carried out in 2007-08 and 95 percent of these achieved a successful outcome.
• Eleven percent of all flytips involved single black bags.
• Fifty percent of recorded flytips occurred on the highway.
• Sixty percent of the flytips dealt with by local authorities involved household waste. This is approximately the same as 2006-07.
• Flytip incidents appeared 50 percent higher last year due to a reporting anomaly by Liverpool City Council. This has now been corrected.

Waste Minister Jane Kennedy said, “Flytipping is unacceptable and a blight on public land. I am pleased to see the decrease in incidents, but we still need to work on the serious environmental and social problem of flytipping.”