01.09.11
Fly-tipping costs taxpayer £40m
There were about 656,000 fly-tipping incidents in England and Wales in the last year, costing the taxpayer £40m, according to statistics from the Countryside Alliance.
The information came from councils after Freedom of Information requests, and shows that there are over 75 incidents per hour of people illegally dumping rubbish in England and Wales.
Only one in 50 investigations led to a prosecution, and councils collected £692,000 in fines last year. This is a significant decrease since a similar study in 2006-7, which saw 2.5 million incidents, costing £100m in clearing up and legal action.
Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, said: “Fly-tipping blights our countryside - ruining the beautiful views for which Britain is rightly famous, endangering wildlife and habitats, and costing the taxpayer millions of pounds to clear up.
“The coalition government promised to end this scourge when they published the waste review this summer. This is a promising start. However, they need to work closer with cash-strapped local authorities to tackle this blight.
“By raising the landfill tax in the budget and with more cuts coming to council budgets, this problem is only going to get worse.
“We need a co-ordinated plan which ensures that people who fly-tip are caught and punished, and provides greater support to local authorities and landowners who bear the brunt of the cost of clearing up the mess.”
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