Grants awarded across 26 local authorities to target fly-tipping hotspots
26 councils will receive a share of an almost £1 million boost to step up their battle against fly tipping and better protect communities, Recycling Minister Robbie Moore announced today (18 May 2024).
The grants will support various schemes to take the fight to waste criminals – such as an increase in CCTV cameras in hotspot areas, AI-assisted camera technology, and campaigns to raise households’ awareness of their duty to only use licensed waste companies when getting rid of rubbish.
This round will see 26 local authorities across England benefit from the grants of up to £50,000, including the London Borough of Hounslow, City of Wolverhampton Council and Cheshire East Council.
Recycling Minister, Robbie Moore said:
The grants – totalling a combined £994,547 – announced today will build on almost £1.2m which has already been allocated since 2022 across 32 other local authorities as part of the fly-tipping intervention grant scheme.
In the previous round, Defra funding helped Hyndburn Borough Council install fencing and gates to prevent access to fly-tipping hotspots. This saw fly-tipping decrease by 100% in these areas in the following three months and the council saved approximately £4,150 in waste removal and clean-up costs over that period. This, and other case studies, are available from Keep Britain Tidy.
Under the Prime Minister’s Antisocial Behaviour Action Plan we increased the upper limit of on-the-spot fines for fly-tipping to £1,000, and for littering to £500 in July 2023; laid regulations to ringfence the money raised by councils from litter and fly-tipping penalties for enforcement and clean up activity, which came into force on the 1st April 2024; and published league tables on fly-tipping enforcement to show which councils are taking a strong approach.
Councils can issue on-the-spot fines to fly-tippers and can stop, search, and seize vehicles suspected of being used for fly-tipping. Local authorities are also able to issue penalties to householders who pass their waste to an unlicensed carrier, as this waste is likely to be found fly tipped.
Councillor Guy Lambert, Cabinet Member for Highways, Recycling and Health Integration at Hounslow Council said:
Councillor Bhupinder Gakhal, Cabinet Member for Resident Services at City of Wolverhampton Council, said:
Further reforms include tougher background checks for waste operators, as well as mandatory digital waste tracking, which will enable authorities to identify when waste drops out of the system, and help householders to check if their waste has been disposed of properly.
We are also working hard with the National Fly-tipping Prevention Group to create a new fly-tipping toolkit, which incorporates guides on how councils and others can present robust cases to court, set up and run effective local partnerships to tackle fly-tipping and raise awareness of the household and business waste duty of care, with further parts to come.
A full list of recipients is available below.