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Far more than an eyesore and a nuisance, fly-tipping can be a health hazard to passers-by and cause serious damage to soils and waterways.

Defined as the “illegal deposit of any waste onto land that does not have a licence to accept it”, fly-tipping ranges from discarding mattresses on the pavement to the dumping of mountains of construction materials on country lanes.

As part of its crackdown on antisocial behaviour, the Government committed to “increase the transparency of data on the use of on-the-spot fines, including publishing league tables on fly-tipping to show which local authorities are taking a muscular approach.”

These data show councils are pursuing perpetrators more doggedly than ever, as the number of Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued in England shot up 58 percent.

The figures from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) reveal the areas fighting back the hardest.

Fly-tipping is a serious criminal offence for which people can be prosecuted. Courts have the power to impose unlimited fines, deprive rights to the vehicle used to commit the offence or impose prison sentences.

The total value of fines handed out in the 2021 to 2022 financial year more than doubled from £330,000 the previous year to £840,000.

There were just over 91,000 FPNs issued for fly-tipping last year across England’s 317 local authorities. While 43 issued none at all, others proved ruthless at combatting the scourge.

Nowhere are fly-tippers more severely punished in England than in Thurrock in Essex. The council reported 1,953 such incidents in 2021/22 – a total far lower than in the worst affected area of Brent in London, which counted 35,840.

However, police in Thurrock dished out 4,341 FPNs for the offence – more than two per incident (2.2). 

Only Basildon (1.74), Brighton and Hove (1.65) and Brentwood (1.04) followed suit in handing out fines faster than the perpetrators could dump their waste.

The most lenient area was found to be Norwich, where 4,805 reported incidents took place without a single FPN being issued.

Check how your council has performed by entering the name in the search box below.

Keep Britain Tidy is the country’s leading anti-littering campaign group. According to them, fly-tipping is reaching “epidemic proportions”.

After years of a steadily increasing trend, the latest figures, however, show an four percent fall in recorded fly-tipping incidents nationwide, suggesting recent policy changes are having some effect. Total incidents involving household waste were 671,000, down nine percent from 740,000 in 2020/21.

Councillor Darren Rodwell, environment spokesperson for the LGA said: “Councils need to have a range of sanctions at their disposal depending on circumstances, including the threat of prosecution to act as a strong deterrent to criminals and the worst offenders.

“For that to happen, we the want courts to look at fly-tipping as an offence first, rather than at the individual and their ability to pay, as well as more use of suspended sentences, or custodial sentences for anyone convicted of a second fly-tipping offence.

“But paramount to all of this is the fact that councils needs a stable financial environment so that they can afford to employ officers to develop litter and fly-tipping strategies and put the best local actions in place.

“For this reason, we believe that councils should be given the powers necessary to set fines for fly-tipping and littering offences locally rather than by Government."

Reports to the Environment Agency can be made using their national hotline number on 0800 807 060