The Countryside Alliance has called on the government to address the 20% increase in fly-tipping incidents on public land last year.
Local authorities dealt with a total of 852 thousand incidents of fly-tipping in 2013/14 an increase of 20 per cent since 2012/2013 with nearly two thirds of fly-tips involving household waste.
This increase follows more recent year on year declines in the number of incidents. a number of local authorities have reported an increase in the number of fly-tipping incidents. Some local authorities have introduced new technologies; such as online reporting and electronic applications as well increased training for staff and have explained this as a factor in the increase in the number of incidents reported.
47% of all fly-tips occurred on highways in 2013/2014. This was an increase of 27% from last year.
The Countryside Alliance welcomed the annual release of fly-tipping figures from Defra today which enables us to see the true picture of this problem.
However, the figures published by Defra only represent incidents of fly-tipping on public land, and therefore only show part of the problem. Millions of landowners - from rail networks to utility companies and farmers - have to cover the cost of rubbish dumped on their private land themselves and at personal cost to the individual or organisation.
Sarah Lee, head of campaigns for the Countryside Alliance, said: “For individual landowners particularly, there is often a feeling that they are dealing with this costly problem on their own and they can feel isolated and ignored.
“Fly-tipping is anti-social and the longer we fail to tackle to the root causes of this problem the worse this is going to get. The Countryside Alliance released a report in 2007 calling for greater action, but little seems to have moved on since then. It is now time for action and we call upon the Government to work better with local authorities, landowners and other civic bodies to make this blight unacceptable.”
