Action needed on £186m cost of fly-tipping - Essex council

Fly-tippers dumped a pile of household rubbish dumped in a quiet rural lane at Crays Hill near Basildon, Essex

Action is needed to cut fly-tipping which is costing councils in the UK up to £186m a year to investigate and clear up, says a report.

The think tank Policy Exchange has called on councils to enforce anti-littering laws.

In Essex, Basildon Council leader Andrew Baggott said fly-tippers should not be "tolerated".

The government said it had "doubled the maximum on-the-spot fine for littering" as well as other measures.

In 2021-22, local authorities in England dealt with more than one million fly-tipping incidents.

Basildon Council leader Andrew Baggott said if people did not heed the warnings about fly-tipping, they would be fined

Nigel Todd, enforcement officer with Basildon Council, showed BBC Politics East a pile of household rubbish dumped in a quiet rural lane at Crays Hill.

"Someone has possibly paid a rogue waste carrier to take away their waste and instead of it ending up at a waste recycling centre, it's ended up at the side of the road," he said.

"The person who's taken the waste away has clearly fly-tipped it, so they're in trouble and the person who paid to have the waste taken away is also responsible because, by law, they have a duty of care to ensure that the person taking their waste away has the correct accreditation."

"I come across residents who are absolutely devastated by the impact on their personal lives and I just feel for them. I'm absolutely appalled."

Mr Todd turned over a child's chest of drawers and stuck behind the back panel was a folded piece of paper. It was a letter and it contained an address. He has something to investigate.

There were 75,664 reported incidents of fly-tipping across the East of England in 2021-22

Basildon issues more fixed penalty notices (6,420) than any other council in the east of England. Only this week a local man was fined £2,400 and made to pay costs of £1,050 after pleading guilty to fly-tipping a tonne of builder's waste.

Mr Baggott said: "Anybody who thinks they can do things like this at the expense of other people isn't tolerated.

"We believe educate, educate and then fine. We will talk to someone, give them a chance, give them a second chance, but three strikes and you're out."

Policy Exchange's report on littering calls for:

• A national awareness campaign to make littering unacceptable

• Better bin provision

• A tripling of fines, that currently average £400

• A council league table to show how good councils are at cracking down on the problem

The report says the latest figures from the government show that fly-tipping incidents in the east of England have increased by 21% in the last two years.

There were 75,664 reported incidents across the region - the largest number was in Peterborough (8,981) followed by Luton (6,256) and Norwich (4,805).

Basildon Council sees fly-tipping as intollerable

The report says that after years of inaction with a "worrying number of councils" not enforcing the law, we need a reboot of the UK litter strategy.

"We need to treat litter a lot more seriously," said Lord Eric Pickles, the former Conservative leader of Bradford Council, ex-MP for Brentwood & Ongar in Essex and former government cabinet minister.

"This is not a victimless crime - it has an effect on wildlife, water courses and on the general environment."

Lord Pickles said a "name and shame" league table of council prosecutions would put pressure on authorities to do more.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokeswoman said: "Litter blights our communities, spoils our countryside, harms our wildlife, and taxpayers' money is wasted cleaning it up.

She added that councils "have been empowered to introduce penalty charge notices to target owners of vehicles from which litter is thrown".

You can see more on this story on Politics East on BBC One on Sunday, 26 February at 10:00 GMT, with it also available on BBC iPlayer afterwards.