Fly-Tipping: A Burden on Private Landowners
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A recent survey by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) found that most councils reported an increase in fly-tipping over recent years. 

 

Fly-tipping is the illegal deposit or ‘dumping’ of any waste onto land which has no license to accept waste. The most common materials to be tipped are garden waste, white goods, DIY waste, tyres and furniture.

 

Fly-tipping is becoming a particular burden to private landowners, whose land does not come under local authority or Environment Agency (EA) responsibility for waste removal.

 

Whilst on public land, the tax payer, through local authorities and the EA, foots the bill of waste clear up and disposal, on private land, it is the landlord or tenant who is responsible for the full costs of clean up and removal of the illegal waste to an authorised site. In fact, if landowners do not arrange legal disposal of the waste at their own cost, they may face criminal fines and charges themselves for storing waste on their land.

 

Government figures suggest that it costs private landowners £50 million a year to clear up illegally dumped rubbish. In addition to direct costs of clean up and disposal, the waste can detrimentally impact land owners in many other ways. Pollution to underlying soil quality and water ways; risks to animals on the land; health and safety issues, particularly with hazardous waste; and impact on investment and tourism as the aesthetic quality and reputation of an area is affected.

 

The CLA state that in East Anglia nearly 60% of farms have experienced fly tipping, by far the worst area in the UK. The CLA believe that the government’s aim to make landowners protect their land is unreasonable and state it is totally impractical, for example, to install floodlights and CCTV around the huge farms in the East.

 

On March 11 2008, Bernard Jenkins, MP for North Essex, with the help of the CLA introduced a ten minute rule Bill to combat fly-tipping on private land. The two measures in his Bill would place an obligation on the Environment Agency or the relevant local authority to remove waste if the landowner “did not knowingly cause or knowingly permit” the waste to be deposited and “place a duty on the relevant authority to investigate incidents of fly-tipping”.  The Bill has the support of the CLA and the National Farmers Union.

 

The Bill was granted an unopposed second reading, but is unlikely to go any further without Government support. Currently, the main legislation in this area is the Environmental Protection Act (1990), which only places responsibility on the local authority or EA to remove waste dumped on public land. Opponents to Mr Jenkins’ Bill argue that placing a duty on authorities to remove waste from private land would encourage illegal dumping, rather than tackling the problem. People would not pay the costs to dispose of waste legitimately if they knew they could fly tip anywhere with the authorities footing the bill.

 

Mr Jenkins and the CLA will continue their campaign to reduce the burden on landowners. 

 

Landowners can find guidance notes on the Defra website, www.defra.gov.uk, on how to deal with fly-tipping and suggested methods of prevention. 

 

The Government is looking in to how the ‘Flycapture’ database, used by local authorities and the EA to prevent and record fly tipping incidents on public land, can help build a better picture of the problem in relation to private land. 

 

 

 

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