CPRE celebrates fall in fly tipping

9 September 2010

The Campaign to Protect Rural England today welcomed news that the number of fly-tipping incidents across England has decreased by a fifth (18.7 per cent) in the last year [1]. This reduction follows on from a nine per cent fall the previous year. These improvements are the result of hard work by many authorities in prosecuting fly-tippers, something CPRE has been calling for through its Stop the Drop campaign spearheaded by Bill Bryson, CPRE’s President.

In total, there were 2,460 prosecution actions carried out in 2009-10, of which 97 per cent achieved a successful outcome.

Samantha Harding, CPRE’s Stop the Drop campaign manager, says: “These results show that councils are making real progress in the fight against fly tipping. They show that a consistent approach to dealing with fly tipping through prevention and enforcement can lead to real savings to the public purse. With councils now facing budget pressures we hope that they will not stop their drive to end fly tipping but step it up as a way to cut costs in the long run.

“But the statistics only deal with fly-tipping on public land. The £45.8 million bill for dealing with fly-tipping would be significantly higher if you added the costs incurred by farmers and other private landowners who have to clear up fly-tipping at their own expense.”

Notes:

1. DEFRA (2010), ‘England Flytipping Official Statistics April 2009 to March 2010’, 9th September 2010 http://defra.gov.uk/environment/quality/local/flytipping/documents/flytipping-statistics09-10.pdf

• Stop the Drop campaign against litter and fly-tipping in the countryside is a flagship CPRE campaign and was launched in April 2008. The campaign calls for a national, long term education campaign, a bottle deposit scheme and a change to the law on roadside litter. To date the campaign has inspired the formation of 334 litter picking groups across England, who have collectively cleared 41,332 bags of litter to date. Further information about the campaign can be found at its websites: www.cpre.org.uk and www.litteraction.org.uk