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

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Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions 5 The offender’s perspective Developing a perspective on the problem from the offender’s point of view was a major objective of this study. This section examines what we know about offenders and what we have learned from talking to them. There are three parts to this: • The first examines what we know from official court records of prosecutions and offenders’ criminal careers • The second describes the results of a national randomised household survey of the extent of fly-tipping • The third examines the issues to emerge from one-to-one interviews with convicted offenders and businesses involved in the transportation and disposal of waste 5.1 Prosecutions and criminal careers This section examines what we know about convicted offenders. Two datasets were created from nationally held databases: a) details of prosecutions in magistrate’s courts for contraventions against four sections of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, for the period 1991-2004. These data were extracted from the Court Proceedings Database held by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform. The offences were: Relevant legislation Environmental Protection Act 1990 section 33 (1) Description Depositing, causing the deposition or permitting the deposition, treating, keeping or disposing of controlled (but not hazardous) in or on land without a licence Referred to below as TIPPING CONTROLLED WASTE Relevant legislation Environmental Protection Act 1990 section 33 (1) Description Depositing, causing the deposition or permitting the deposition of hazardous waste in or on land without a licence Referred to below as TIPPING HAZARDOUS WASTE Relevant legislation Environmental Protection Act 1990 section 34 Description Importing, producing, carrying, keeping, treats or disposes of controlled waste without taking reasonable measures; failing to comply with the secretary of states requirements Referred to below as DUTY OF CARE Relevant legislation Environmental Protection Act 1990 section 33 (6) Description Contravening conditions of a waste management licence Referred to below as WASTE MANAGEMENT LICENCE 49
Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions b) details of offenders, including their criminal histories, for those convicted for the above offences in 2004. This data was extracted from the Police National Computer Prosecutions Figure 5.1 shows the number of prosecutions of each type over the 14 year period, essentially since the Environmental Protection Act was introduced. Figure 5.1: Number of prosecutions in magistrates courts (England & Wales) 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 Tipping controlled waste Tipping hazardous waste Duty of care Waste management licence 100 50 0 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Clearly, the number of prosecutions has grown enormously over this period, as would be expected with new legislation. The risk of prosecution, however, remains small. On the basis that Flycapture suggests around one million flytips per year, the risk of being sanctioned for fly-tipping is less than 1%, even taking into account the possibility that these court figures underestimate rates of sanctioning. The upward trend, however, is promising and can be expected to continue, even pick up pace as local authorities exercise their new powers and expand their enforcement work. There are two rather unusual trends that are worth commenting on here. The first is the sharp increase in duty of care prosecutions in 2004. This probably reflects the powers now available to local authorities to check waste transfer notes and suggests that they are indeed beginning to make use of these. The second is the increase in prosecutions for waste management licence contraventions, which picks up pace from 2000. The reasons for this are unknown. The proportion of cases prosecuted which end in a conviction remain steady throughout this period at around 80%, and as Figure 5.2 shows fines are the most common sentence for all offences. There is no change in the pattern of sentencing over this period. The average fine per offender was £2,000, but 50
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Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions - Keep Britain Tidy

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