'Rubbish Dump Britain' the system is broken as fly-tipping rises again

Government statistics show an alarming 2% rise in incidents, with two-thirds of fly-tips involving household waste.

Ahead of the Panorama programme 'Rubbish Dump Britain', Keep Britain Tidy Chief Executive Allison Ogden-Newton spoke to BBC Breakfast News to outline the charity's call for reform of the waste carrier licensing system.

Figures just released show that in the year 2019/2020 local authorities dealt with almost 1 million fly-tipping incidents, an increase of 2% since 2018/2019. 

Keep Britain Tidy today calls on the government to make tackling the scourge of fly-tipping an urgent priority by bringing in immediate reform of the waste carrier licensing system and use of income from the landfill tax.

Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Chief Executive of Keep Britain Tidy, said: “The fact that more than a third of all fly-tips (34%) are small-van size shows that this environmental crime is being driven by ‘man with a van’ operators who are conning the public with what appears to be a cheap way of getting rid of their rubbish, but one that leads to illegal disposal and environmental devastation."

The Panorama feature 'Rubbish Dump Britain', which will air on the BBC, shines a spotlight on organised waste carrier crime, and the failings of the waste carrier licensing system to stop licensed carriers from dumping waste illegally.

Keep Britain Tidy has developed a multi-faceted 7 point action plan in a bid to halt this worrying upward trend and put a stop this this scourge on our countryside once and for all. The full action plan calls for measures to make it easier for households to do the right thing, and encourages stiffer sentencing in magistrates courts for those who are found to dump waste illegally.

In addition to the 7 point action plan and following our research to better understand household fly-tipping behaviour, Keep Britain Tidy worked with Newham Council and its residents to design a pioneering programme of behaviour change pilots to tackle fly-tipping.

The pilots achieved significant results, with reductions in fly-tipping of up to 70% achieved in some areas. Other benefits included improved resident understanding of the fact fly-tipping is illegal and of the damaging impacts it can have on communities and the environment.

Newham Council is now rolling some of the pilots out across the borough and Keep Britain Tidy is scaling up the successful interventions nationally in addition to piloting new interventions to tackle the issue which will be scaled later this year.