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

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
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