Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions - Keep Britain Tidy

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Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions 2 What the literature tells us There is a very sparse research literature on fly-tipping. A search of academic databases, in England, Europe and the USA, unearthed few pieces of published work and just one piece of ‘grey literature’ (Old, 2003). This review has been expanded, therefore, to include literature on related behaviours of littering and abandoned vehicles on the basis that these might lend some insight into the problem of fly-tipping. It also includes various surveys and other small unpublished pieces of analysis conducted locally. The current context – roles and responsibilities Fly-tipping, defined by Defra (www.Defra.gov.uk) as ‘the illegal disposal of waste’, is illegal under section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act (1990, c.43 part II). In addition to the actual tipping of waste, the Act also makes it an offence to handle waste carelessly (so-called duty of care offences) or without a waste management licence. Data discussed later in this report shows how convictions for all these offences have grown continually since 1990. Much of what follows, however, refers to the first of these – the tipping of waste illegally. The powers available to enforcement agencies (the Environment Agency and local authorities) and the penalties available to the courts have been substantially increased by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act (2005). Specifically, it: • raises the maximum penalty fine available in the Magistrates Court for flytipping from £20k to £50k; • makes a guilty offender pay for all court and investigation costs that enforcement agencies had to pay in bringing the action to court; • allows courts to award clean up costs to enforcement agencies and landowners/occupiers; • provides for forfeiture of vehicles used in fly-tipping; • gives waste collection authorities and the Environment Agency power to stop and search vehicles (a police officer must still be present to stop a vehicle) which are used for fly-tipping, carrying waste when not registered as a waste carrier, or committing a waste duty of care offence; • allows fixed penalty notices for certain regulatory offences. Importantly, all acts of fly-tipping are now arrestable offences providing local authorities and the Environment Agency with increased police support with their enforcement strategies. In addition to providing greater powers to local authorities and the courts, the government is also encouraging greater attention to the problem locally through the establishment in 2005 of a Best Value Performance Indicator (BVPI) on fly-tipping (BVPI 199d). Progress against this BVPI is measured by local authority returns to the national Flycapture database, with progress indicated through a reduction in the number of fly-tipping incidents reported over consecutive years and an increasing number of enforcement actions 3
Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions taken against fly-tippers (ODPM, 2005). This particular BVPI sits within the wider context of Public Service Agreement (PSA) target 8 – ‘to lead the delivery of cleaner, safer, greener public spaces and improvement of the quality of the built environment in deprived areas and across the country, with measurable improvement by 2008’ (ODPM, 2005). Responsibility for dealing with fly-tipping and fly-tippers rests primarily with the Environment Agency and local authorities. In order to clarify who deals with what, a working protocol has been agreed (Working Better Together, Flytipping Protocol, 6, 2005). The agreement, in essence, is that the Environment Agency will deal with the more serious fly-tipping problems irrespective of where they occur. These are defined as those involving large scale dumping (more than a lorry load – approx. 20m 3 ), or tipped by an organised gang or group of offenders or involving certain hazardous wastes. Local authorities are responsible for smaller fly-tips on public land, roads, and by-ways. In cases where the waste is tipped on private land, however, it is the responsibility of the landowner to remove the waste. Indeed if they have deposited, knowingly caused or permitted the deposit then a notice can now be served on either the occupier or the landowner by the enforcement authority requiring them to remove the waste. Appeals can be made to a Magistrates Court, within 21 days (Section 59, Environmental Protection Act 1990). Private land owners include organisations such as the National Trust, Network Rail, British Waterways and Highways Authorities who own substantial amounts of land; through to farmers and urban residents with much smaller plots of land. All have to pay the cost of dealing with fly-tipping. How their responsibility for keeping communities clean of waste are carried out by local authorities can be complicated by the way in which the roles of waste collection and waste disposal are organised. This can lead to some perverse incentives. In two-tiered authorities, the roles of waste collection and waste disposal are separated with the County Council taking responsibility for waste disposal, including managing the Civic Amenity sites, while the Local/District Authority deals with the waste collection. Under this arrangement, it is the local/district authorities that bear most of the costs of flytipping. They bear all the costs of the clean up, with waste disposal authorities bearing the cost of disposal. Since it costs waste disposal authorities the same amount to dispose of household waste whether it is collected, brought to a civic amenity site or fly-tipped, the only actual additional cost of fly-tipping on waste disposal authorities is the loss of revenue in cases where the waste usually carries a charge for its disposal, such as trade or hazardous waste. Waste Disposal Authorities are concerned with meeting targets for re-cycling and minimising use of landfill sites. They may, therefore, introduce policies and practices, such as alternating refuse/recycling collection, closed lid and no side-waste policies, which make it harder for people to dispose of waste properly. The effect of this could be to tempt more people into fly-tipping, thereby increasing the burden on their waste collection colleagues but not on themselves. In unitary authorities, however, where the same organisation is responsible for both waste collection and disposal services the potential for 4
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Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions - Keep Britain Tidy

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