Fly-tipping in England down 7.5%

Government figures show that flytipping on public land in England has fallen 7.5% in the last year.

The report from Defra also revealed that enforcement action and successful prosecution have both increased in the last year.

Enforcement actions issued by local authorities increased 26%, whilst 95% of the 1,871 prosecutions for flytipping in 2007-2008 were successful.

Despite the improvements, local authorities still had to clean up 1.28 million piles of illegally dumped rubbish, costing taxpayers over £70 million.

Statistics from Liverpool City Council were excluded from the report because environment officers at the local authority reported thousands of irrelevant ’small household fly tips’.

Liverpool councillors reported 1.3 million fly-tips - more than the total number of fly-tips reported by the all the other local authorities in England.

Waste Minister Jane Kennedy said she is pleased that fly-tipping is on the decrease.

She added that the government is committed to making flytipping a thing of the past.

Some of the figures suggested that local councils need to do more to ensure that refuse collections in their area are effective.

Eleven percent of flytipping events involved a single black rubbish bag, and 60% of fly tips reported to public authorities consisted of household waste.