Fly-Tipping Statistics UK: The Definitive Guide (2026)

1.26 Million Incidents: England's Fly-Tipping Epidemic

Fly-tipping — the illegal deposit of waste on land not licensed to receive it — has reached epidemic scale in England. In the year April 2024 to March 2025, local authorities in England recorded 1.26 million fly-tipping incidents — a 9% increase on the 1.15 million recorded the previous year, which was itself 6% higher than the year before. The trajectory is consistently and steeply upward.

Key Facts & Figures (Overview)

What Is Fly-Tipping?

Fly-tipping is defined in law as the illegal deposit of any waste on land that does not have a licence to accept it, contrary to Section 33(1)(a) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The specific harms include environmental contamination, public health risks, wildlife harm, and direct economic damage to landowners, councils, and legitimate waste businesses.

Who Is Responsible for Clearance?

Local authorities are responsible for clearing fly-tipped waste from public land and handle the vast majority of officially recorded incidents.

The Environment Agency handles large-scale, serious, and organised illegal dumping incidents posing an immediate threat to human health or the environment. In 2024/25, the EA dealt with 98 such incidents. Large EA cases may involve clean-up costs of between £10,000 and £500,000 per site.

Private landowners bear the cost of clearing fly-tipped waste from their own land with no mandatory government support. Rural landowners, particularly farmers, are disproportionately affected — surveys show that over two-thirds of farmers have experienced fly-tipping on their land. Private-land incidents are almost entirely absent from the official statistics, meaning the true scale of the problem is substantially larger than the 1.26 million figure captures.

The Enforcement Gap

The statistics reveal a profound enforcement gap. In 2024/25:

Clean Up Britain responded to the statistics calling for: minimum mandatory fines of £20,000 for commercial fly-tippers; mandatory installation of hidden surveillance cameras; and rewritten sentencing guidelines.

Organised Crime and Waste

Large-scale fly-tipping is frequently connected to organised criminal gangs. The Environmental Services Association has repeatedly warned that waste crime funds other serious criminal activities and undermines investment in the UK's circular economy.

Notable large-scale sites include Hoad's Wood, Kent (June 2025), where organised criminals dumped lorry loads of waste piled up to 15 feet high. Multiple sites across England have received tens of thousands of tonnes of industrial waste with clean-up costs in the millions.

The Duty of Care

Every person or business that produces, handles, or disposes of controlled waste has a legal duty of care under Section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. This requires waste producers to:

Householders who pass waste to an unregistered collector can be fined up to £600 even if they did not commit the fly-tip themselves.

Written by CPD Experts

This guide was produced by the team at Online CPD Academy, a UK provider of CPD-accredited online training courses. Our environmental awareness training covers the duty of care framework, waste carrier licensing, record-keeping obligations, and the consequences of regulatory non-compliance.

Sources & References