Rural litter

What is driving rural waste crime – and how do we tackle it?

Rural England is facing a growing challenge from fly‑tipping and wider waste crime. Between April 2024 and March 2025, local authorities recorded 1.26 million fly‑tipping incidents in England, a 9% rise on the previous year; while the Environmental Services Association has estimated that waste crime costs the economy more than £1 billion annually. Yet these figures exclude the incidents and costs faced by private landowners, where much of the rural impact falls. Surveys have highlighted the scale of the problem: with many farmers and landowners reporting repeated dumping. Indeed, individual clean‑ups often cost £1,000–£10,000 per incident, with some rural dwellers facing tens of thousands of pounds in cumulative losses. Rising disposal costs and the increasing involvement of organised criminal networks are driving both the frequency and complexity of the problem, leaving rural communities and businesses exposed not just to financial losses but environmental damage and biosecurity risks. While enforcement bodies are taking action — from shutting down illegal waste sites to increasing enforcement and rolling out digital waste tracking — there are growing debates about whether current approaches match the scale and nature of the challenge. What are we doing to address rural waste crime — and is it making a difference? Jessica Sellick investigates. 

“The fly‑tippers have been back again. Someone has dumped waste over the gate, all behind the hedge and this is the third incident we’ve had this year. It’s beyond a joke now. They turn up in a van and offload rubble — tyres, bricks, plastics, barrels, cardboard. Every time it happens, I’m the one who has to organise the clean‑up and pay for it, which takes time away from the farm and costs money we really can’t afford to spend. How is that fair? I can’t understand why people think it’s acceptable to dump their rubbish in the countryside. It would make a real difference if we could catch whoever is doing it”, farmer, Gloucestershire.  

Speak to almost any farmer or rural business owner and you’ll hear the same story: another load of rubbish dumped in a field or lay-by, another gate blocked, and more hours lost dealing with waste that isn’t theirs. This isn’t the odd bit of litter blowing across a farm – it’s van-loads, sometimes even truckloads, of dumped material, sometimes hazardous, posing real risks to people, wildlife and the environment. A survey by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) found almost three-quarters of farmers who responded were affected by fly-tipping each year, with some targeted multiple times each month. While local authorities handle small-scale fly-tipping on public land, and the Environment Agency handles larger-scale, hazardous or organised cases; on private land, landowners are responsible for clearance and must use authorised waste carriers. What is driving the rise in rural waste crime, how are agencies and landowners responding – and is that response keeping pace with the scale of the problem?   

What is fly-tipping and waste crime, and why do they matter?  

Under section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, fly-tipping is a criminal offence that relates to the requirement that ‘a person shall not…deposit controlled waste, or knowingly cause or knowingly permit controlled waste to be deposited in or on any land unless a waste management licence authorising the deposit is in force and the deposit is in accordance with the licence’.  Under section 33(5) of the Act, there is an associated motor offence whereby any person in control of a vehicle shall be treated as ‘knowingly causing the waste to be deposited whether or not he or she gave any instructions for this to be done’. Fly-tipping is the illegal disposal of controlled waste such as household, industrial, commercial items or garden refuse. Waste crime is broader and includes activities such as ‘dumping or burning waste, illegally shipping waste abroad, deliberately mis-describing waste (either to evade landfill tax or avoid the correct management required) and operating illegal waste sites’.  

Enforcement responsibilities are shared between local authorities, who handle small-scale fly-tipping on public land, with the Environment Agency dealing with larger-scale, hazardous and organised cases, and the Police responding to Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) and individuals and groups that commit other types of crime but exploit the waste industry. Householders have a duty of care to ensure their waste is passed to authorised carriers, and businesses must ensure their waste carrier is registered to dispose of waste.  

According to the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), waste crime is not a new issue but in recent years it has escalated into ‘a more sophisticated, more damaging and costly criminal enterprise. From Landfill Tax fraud and illegal waste exports to the shocking illegal waste dumps around the country, waste criminals are causing serious harm to our communities and environment’. The headline figures suggest:  

  • Waste criminals are all around us: according to the Environment Agency’s National Waste Crime Survey (2025), respondents reported that 20% of all waste produced may be illegally managed – enough to fill Wembley Stadium 35 times.  
  • Waste crime is big business: back in 2021, the Environmental Services Association (ESA) quantified the extent of waste crime and its impact as approaching £1 billion a year.  Waste crime undermines investment in jobs and growth in the legal waste and resources sector.   
  • Rogue operators are financially motivated: analysis suggests that 35% of waste crime is committed by Organised Crime Groups (OCGs).  
  • A threat to public safety: only 27% of all waste crimes are reported, with some offenders thought to be involved in other forms of serious and dangerous crime.  
  • Reduced funding for local services: in 2024/25, local authorities in England dealt with 1.26 million fly-tipping incidents, an increase of 9% from those reported in 2023/24. 62% of cases involved household waste in 2024/25, a 13% increase in incidents from 2023/24. 4% of incidents were for large fly-tipping, costing local authorities £19.3 million to clear.  
  • Illegal dumping and unmanaged waste sites pose land and water contamination risks: the Environment Agency currently holds a record of 700 known illegal waste sites across England. While most can be brought into compliance, 143 operating in 2024/25 were assessed as higher-risk.  In one example, the Environment Agency declared a critical incident at an illegal waste tipping site between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington in November 2025. An estimated 10,000 tonnes of rubbish had been dumped at the site, requiring protective barriers to prevent waste from entering the river.  The Environment Agency is cataloguing progress with waste removal at the site.  

Fly-tipping and wider waste crime is a long-standing, significant and growing problem, and it is now highly organised. It impacts on communities and the environment and creates substantial financial pressures for private landowners who must fund the removal of waste dumped on their property.  

What is the scale of the problem in rural areas?   

Fly-tipping data on public land in England and Wales is recorded on WasteDataFlow and collated by Defra into a statistical notice. These official statistics, updated in February 2026, show that between April 2024 and March 2025:   

  • Local authorities in England dealt with 1.26 million incidents, whereby household waste accounted for 62% of fly-tips, with 777,000 in 2024/25 – a 13% increase from 688,000 incidents in 2023/24. 
  • The most common location for fly-tipping was highways (pavements and roads), representing 37% of all incidents in 2024/25. Highway incidents rose to 463,000, a 9% increase from 427,000 in 2023/24. 
  • The most common size category for fly-tipping incidents in 2024/25 was equivalent to a ‘small van load’ (31% of total incidents), followed by the equivalent of a ‘car boot or less’ (27%). 
  • In 2024/25, 52,000 incidents (4%) were of ‘tipper lorry load’ size or larger, an 11% increase from 47,000 in 2023/24.  
  • Local authorities carried out 572,000 enforcement actions in 2024/25, an increase of 8% from the 530,000 in 2023/24. 
  • 69,000 fixed penalty notices were issued in 2024/25, a 9% rise from 63,000 in 2023/24, making them the second most common enforcement action after investigations (accounting for 12% of all actions in 2024/25). 
  • Court fines decreased by 9%, from 1,378 in 2023/24 to 1,250 in 2024/25, and the value of fines decreased by 8% to £673,000. However, the average fine increased slightly, from £530 in 2023/24 to £539 in 2024/25. 

Defra has applied fly-tipping incidents reported in 2022/23 on WasteDataFlow by land type and by the Rural Urban Classification (RUC). This analysis shows:   

  • There were fewer fly-tipping incidents reported per 100,000 population in Predominantly Rural areas than in Predominantly Urban areas. Between 2019/20 and 2022/23 there have been consistently fewer incidents reported in rural areas compared to urban areas, and rural incidents have fallen since 2021/22.   
  • While fewer rural incidents were reported, the type of waste differed – with 17 more tyre incidents and 4 more asbestos incidents per 100,000 population in Predominantly Rural areas compared to Predominantly Urban areas.  
  • There were 9 agricultural fly-tipping incidents per 100,000 population in Predominantly Rural areas, compared to 5 incidents per 100,000 in Predominantly Urban areas.  
  • The most commonly reported land type was fly-tipping on highways – with 372 incidents reported per 100,000 population in Predominantly Rural areas, compared to 961 in Predominantly Urban areas.  

The Environment Agency uses a National Waste Crime Survey to gather insights from the waste industry and potential victims of waste crime. The fourth survey, based on 764 respondents, highlights the persistent scale of waste crime in 2025:  

  • Respondents estimated that 35% of all waste crimes are committed by organised crime groups (OCGs) – up from 31% in 2023.  
  • 89% of landowners/farmers and waste industry respondents believe waste crimes are most likely to be committed by repeat offenders, operating locally or regionally.  

There are important data limitations here. Local authorities collect fly-tipping data from multiple internal sources and teams and apply Defra’s reporting guidance independently, leading to variations in how incidents are classified and recorded. The data excludes most incidents on private land and large-scale incidents handled by the Environment Agency. Similarly, the Environment Agency’s survey is based on a self-selecting group of waste industry, landowners, farmers and service providers who are invited to complete the survey anonymously online.  

At the National Rural Crime Network’s (NRCN) annual conference in 2025, the findings of a Neighbourhood Alert Crime Survey (2024) were shared: of the 127,485 respondents, 11% of rural respondents had experienced fly tipping in the last 12 months. The NRCN has produced a series of documents to highlight how illegal waste dumping on farmland is affecting farmers.  

In February 2026, the CLA published case studies showing the scale and impact of fly-tipping occurring on privately-owned land, with farmers standing the financial burden and environmental impact. A CLA Survey found almost three quarters of farmers are affected each year, with some targeted multiple times each month. Each incident costs farmers, on average, £1,000 to clear, and 85% have invested in CCTV, lighting and other security measures. The CLA also highlights increasing use of rural properties, infrequently used yards, and derelict warehouses for waste crime – including one example from Cambridgeshire involving hundreds of tonnes of rubbish being concealed inside bale wrap and stacked in a field. CLA President Gavin Lane describes how:  

“Farmers and land managers have had enough. The countryside is increasingly being targeted by organised crime gangs – often violent – who know that rural areas are under-policed and resourced. It’s not just litter blotting the landscape, but tonnes of household and commercial waste which can often be hazardous – even including asbestos and chemicals – endangering wildlife, livestock, crops and the environment. Farmers are victims yet have to pay clean-up costs themselves”.  

These findings build on the Countryside Alliance’s Rural Crime Survey 2025 which found fly-tipping to be the most prevalent rural crime, accounting for 44% of all reported rural offences. It led the Countryside Alliance to launch a new interactive rural crime map to give rural communities across the UK a new way to highlight the reality of crime and to help build a national evidence base for change.  

While the public data suggests rural areas experience fewer fly-tipping incidents overall, much of the problem occurs on private land, meaning it is not routinely recorded and farmers and landowners are left to absorb the clean-up costs. Waste crime in rural areas is typically more organised, with repeat offenders and organised crime groups exploiting isolated locations. The true volume of fly-tipping and waste crime is not fully known, but the available evidence shows that it places a disproportionate burden on farmers, landowners and rural businesses.    

What is being done to disrupt and stop fly tipping and waste criminality?   

A parliamentary debate on the illegal waste tipping site between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington and the clearance of the site was held in January 2026. The debate focused on the scale and seriousness of illegal waste crime, the role, capacity and resources of the Environment Agency and the need for stronger action to tackle waste crime. Mary Creagh (Minister for Nature, Defra), highlighted how:  

“The most important thing when any crime is being carried out, wherever it is happening…is for us as citizens to do something. That might be reporting it to the council, the local police or the Environment Agency…The playbook is important. Once something has been reported, what does the local authority, the police or the EA [Environment Agency] do? What is the definition of “major site”?…what are the definitions and where do national agencies step in?”    

The Environmental Services Association (ESA) notes that since the publication of Waste Crime: Britain’s Dirty Secret (2014) and Rethinking Waste Crime (2017) there has been renewed Government focus on waste crime. Yet the scale and persistence of the illegal tipping at Kidlington raises a difficult question: how far have these efforts translated into real-world change on the ground?   

Since 2014, sentencing guidelines have been produced by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales – with offenders in a Magistrates Court liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, an unlimited fine or both; and offenders in the Crown Court to 5 years imprisonment, an unlimited fine or both.   In addition, offenders can also have assets frozen and confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, The Control of Waste (Dealing with Seized Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015, and Control of Pollution (Amendment) Act 1989 [vehicle]. Fixed penalty levels were last increased in The Environmental Offences (Fixed Penalties) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023, which raised the upper limit for household duty of care waste offences from £400 to £600, and for fly-tipping from £400 to £1,000. Unlimited fines remain available if a conviction is secured in a court. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 includes a provision that courts may order between 3 and 9 penalty points to the licences of drivers of vehicles caught fly-tipping. Indeed, in February 2026, Defra published new guidance to advise local authorities on how to seize and crush vehicles used to dump waste.     

Alongside this, the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 enable waste authorities to prosecute operators and land occupiers who allow illegal dumping, with penalties again including imprisonment and fines; while The Waste Enforcement (England and Wales) Regulations 2018 gives local authorities the power to require unlawfully deposited waste to be removed; and Section 59 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 enables a local authority or the Environment Agency to issue a notice to an occupier or landowner to clear controlled waste that has been illegally deposited within a time period of not less than 21 days.   

Alongside this legislation and these powers, various changes have been made to the waste management regime and interventions undertaken to tackle waste crime and fly-tipping. Some examples include:  

  • An independent review of serious and organised crime in the waste sector (2018), commissioned by Defra. The recommendations included the establishment of a Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC) which began in 2020 and is led by the Environment Agency and comprises 11 enforcement organisations and 2 partners. The latest corporate report, published in July 2025 and covering the financial year of 2024 to 2025, highlights the JUWC’s work around Prepare, Prevent, Protect and Pursue. The report contains one reference to rural – a multi-agency road stops day of action in November 2024 which involved Kent Police Rural Crime Team.     
  • A House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee inquiry on waste crime (2025). The Committee wrote to Defra calling for an independent and comprehensive review of how waste crime is handled. In response, the Secretary of State rejected the proposal, citing how this would require diverting resources from planned reforms, and that the Government’s focus remains on tangible actions to address waste crime. In March 2026, the Committee held two oral evidence sessions with representatives from Defra, the Environment Agency and HMRC.  
  • A National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group (NFTPG), set up by Defra and bringing together central and local government, enforcement authorities, the waste industry, police and fire service and private landowners. The NFTPG has published advice for landowners dealing with fly tipped waste (originally published in 2015, updated in 2025) which states ‘Keep full details of your clearance and disposal costs. Successful prosecution can mean that your costs incurred for the removal of waste can also be recovered’.  
  • Government has provided specific grants to local authorities to deliver a range of projects to tackle fly-tipping. For example, in 2024, 26 councils across England benefitted from grants of up to £50,000 – with previous rounds seeing £1.2 million allocated to 32 local authorities between 2022 and 2024.  

Nationally, in 2024, the Environment Agency consulted on new charges to fund its regulatory work, including the introduction of a ‘waste crime levy’. This proposed a 10% additional levy on activities related to waste transfer treatment and landfill and deposit for recovery. The Environment Agency estimated that this would generate £3.2 million in additional income each year, enabling it to increase its enforcement activity by 30%. The outcome of the consultation, published in May 2026, revealed a significant number of respondents shared a view that the levy should be funded by the Government through penalties against criminals rather than law abiding waste businesses. In considering the responses and other information available the Environment Agency decided not to take forward the levy. However, the Government previously announced an additional £45 million for the Environment Agency over the next 3 years to strengthen enforcement activity.  

Locally, the Local Government Association (LGA) is calling on the Government and the Sentencing Council to review sentencing guidelines for fly-tipping after analysis found offenders prosecuted through the courts are often fined less than the penalties local authorities can issue directly: £539 in the courts versus £626 average fixed penalty notice.  

In December 2025, Defra published an Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP). Goal 5 in the EIP aims to create a more circular economy, and sets out targets to reduce illegal waste sites from 2023/24 levels by 2029/30 and to reduce fly-tipping incidents from local authority reported levels 2023/24 by 2029/30. To realise these commitments, in March 2026, Defra published a Waste Crime Action Plan. Through this, the Government is proposing to give local authorities new powers to add penalty points to drivers’ licences for people using vehicles for fly-tipping offences, consult on giving local authorities powers to issue fly-tippers with conditional cautions, setting up a new Operational Waste Intelligence and Analysis Unit to bring intelligence together in one place, and build on approaches to publicly name and shame those responsible for fly-tipping.  

In May 2026, new legislation was introduced requiring waste handlers to prove they are qualified to transport waste, and tougher sentences for those illegally dumping waste. In oral evidence to the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, Mary Creagh (Minister for Nature at Defra) positioned the circular economy as a means of preventing waste from being diverted into the illegal economy: 

“With the Circular Economy Taskforce, we are also looking at the big picture. People want to know what happens with their bins, but we also need to think about whole economy change, so that is construction, agri-food, waste electricals, transport, textiles and building materials. All these things contribute hundreds of thousands of tonnes each year, some of which is diverted into the illegal economy. If everything has a value, there is less incentive to just pay someone £20 to take it away because someone will pay you £20 to come and collect it because it has a value”. 

In Scotland, the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 has already seen the introduction of new measures to address the ongoing issue of fly-tipping on farm businesses, protecting landowners from liability.  

In June 2026, the National Rural Crime Network (NRCN) and Future Countryside  published ‘Breaking the Cycle: tackling fly-tipping and waste crime – a roadmap for freedom’, a  report to illuminate how ‘fly-tipping is no longer a marginal environmental issue, but a systematic criminal enterprise exploiting gaps in governance, regulation and enforcement’ (page 3).  They highlight an ‘enforcement lottery’ with only 31% of fly-tipping incidents investigated, and 51.97% of opened investigations leading to no additional action. Whether action is taken depends largely on where the offence occurs. The NCRN and Future Countryside are calling for a comprehensive national dataset to capture the true scale of waste crime, a single and clear reporting route for all incidents, stronger regulation of waste carriers and brokers, sustained action against organised criminal networks, and an end to the injustice of victims being left to bear the costs of crime committed against them. This builds on previous calls from the National Farmers Union (NFU) for stronger enforcement and cost recovery from offenders, and from the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) to establish a new permit scheme allowing farmers who did not cause or knowingly permit the fly-tipping to dispose of it at a waste disposal site free of charge. 

Where next?  

The amount of household, commercial and industrial waste we produce and what we do with it carries environmental, social and economic consequences. Multiple organisations are involved in tackling fly-tipping and waste crime, and a wide range of legislation, strategies and plans set an ambition to eliminate illegal waste activities – often within explicit timeframes. While our understanding of waste crime has improved, critical gaps remain, which means we cannot answer some fundamental questions: how prevalent is waste crime in rural areas? Where is it concentrated and who is responsible? How should incidents be reported and escalated? What resources and capabilities are needed to respond locally, regionally and nationally? The current system is fragmented rather than coordinated and insufficiently future-proofed for the scale and sophistication of the criminality taking place.  

“The countryside is not somewhere to dump rubbish because nobody is watching. The people who live and work there should not be expected to absorb the cost of other people’s criminal behaviour. Rural communities deserve better than that”, Kirstie Allsopp (Breaking the Cycle, June 2026, page 1).  

Related Posts

Leave a Reply