{"id":453113,"date":"2026-03-02T05:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T05:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/453113\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T05:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T05:21:15","slug":"boltons-tipper-lorry-fly-tipping-increase-among-highest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/453113\/","title":{"rendered":"Bolton’s tipper lorry fly tipping increase among highest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Incidents of fly tipping<\/a> were up by 20x in Bolton between 2020 and 2025, according to data from the BBC Shared Data Unit.\n<\/p>\n

\n Bolton’s 1630 per cent increase in large fly tipping incidents since 2020 is third third highest increase in the UK, behind only Rotherham and Thurrock.\n<\/p>\n

\n There were 54 tipper-lorry-sized fly tipping<\/a> incidents in Bolton in 2019\/20 – by 2024\/25 this figure was 934.\n<\/p>\n

\n A spokesperson from the Chartered Institute of Waste Management said: “Waste crime is at risk of running out of control across the UK.\n<\/p>\n

\n “It is evident that waste crime at all levels continues to cause misery and anxiety for local communities and causes real damage to local environments and local economies.\n<\/p>\n

\n 98% say fly-tipping is a problem in their area, with almost three quarters (70%) reporting a (Image: NQ)\n<\/p>\n

\n “Collectively we should all be clear on where the blame lies for such incidents, which is clearly on the perpetrators.\n<\/p>\n

\n “They must be held to account wherever possible and to pay the price for their actions including full clean up costs where they can be recovered.”\n<\/p>\n

\n The largest single increase<\/a> in Bolton took place between 2021\/22 and 2022\/23, where incidents rose from 93 to 733 – an increase of 688 per cent.\n<\/p>\n

\n The data breaks incidents down into two categories; ‘tipper lorry loads’, where a tipper-lorry sized amount of rubbish was dumped in an area, and ‘multi-load incidents’, where several different sources contribute to the same pile of rubbish.\n<\/p>\n

\n Of this, there were 396 tipper lorry loads and 538 significant \/ multi-load incidents in Bolton in 2024\/25.\n<\/p>\n

\n In 2019\/20, these figures were 26 and 28.\n<\/p>\n

\n Fly tipping across the UK has increased in since 2019\/20, though Bolton’s rate of increase is significantly higher than the UK average.\n<\/p>\n

\n There were 31,000 large fly tipping<\/a> incidents in the UK in the year before the pandemic, rising to 52,000 in 2024\/25.\n<\/p>\n

\n Rubbish tipped in New Bury in 2025 (Image: Public)\n<\/p>\n

\n Spokespeople from the Institute of Waste Management and the Countryside Alliance both referenced organised crime in their statements.\n<\/p>\n

\n The claim is that organised crime gangs pose as waste removal crews then illegally dump collected waste in public areas.\n<\/p>\n

\n Defra has previously said the rise is partly being driven by better reporting and recording of incidents.\n<\/p>\n

\n The CIWM is the leading professional body for the waste and resource management sector, representing over 7,000 members in the UK and overseas. It is a registered charity.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0A spokesperson said: “Waste crime is at risk of running out of control across the UK. It is evident that waste crime at all levels continues to cause misery and anxiety for local communities and causes real damage to local environments and local economies.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0“The recent high profile illegal dumping incidents at sites such as Kidlington in Oxfordshire and Bickershaw in Wigan has quite rightly propelled the issue of \u2018industrial scale\u2019 waste crime to the top of government, public, and national media awareness. However, it is also clear that such sites are just the tip of a very large iceberg.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0“And despite the high profile the issue has received in recent months, new sites continue to appear \u2013 Ancaster, Epping Forest, Kilmarnock, Lugar, Treorchy to name just a few.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0“Collectively we should all be clear on where the blame lies for such incidents, which is clearly on the perpetrators.\u00a0 These are crooks and cowboy operators, often organised criminal gangs, deliberately profiting from other\u2019s misery, from polluting our environment and exploiting loopholes in the system.\u00a0 They must be held to account wherever possible and to pay the price for their actions \u2013 including full clean-up costs where they can be recovered.\n<\/p>\n

\n “Landowners and regulators are often stuck between a rock and a hard place, given the obvious complexity of and gaps in the current legal framework, available powers, responsibilities, and liabilities, along with the limitations in targeted resources and capacity of the regulators.”\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0House of Lords peers recently backed a Tory proposal which would see repeat fly-tippers given points on their licences.\n<\/p>\n

\n Home Office minister Lord Hanson of Flint said that the recent spate of fly tipping – including 2024\/25s 1.26m incidents – has helped “focus government minds” on the issue.\n<\/p>\n

\n This may also involve crushing their vehicles.\n<\/p>\n

\n Richard Silvester, Executive Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Environment, said: “Under the previous Conservative administration of Bolton Council<\/a>, they cut back Environmental Enforcement and street cleaning services and really didn’t encourage the public to report fly tipping incidents.\n<\/p>\n

\n “From May 2023, with the investment that the Labour administration of Bolton Council has put into environmental enforcement, not just mainstreaming the budget with the recruitment of more environmental enforcement officers, but also encouraging ward councillors through their area working budgets to also employ ward specific environmental enforcement officers; and the additional investment into street cleansing and the recruitment of more neighbourhood services staff; and encouraging residents and our volunteers to report fly tipping incidents, all of this extra investment with more officers reporting and clearing fly tips and in particular reporting larger ones, which may not necessarily be on council land – many are on unadopted streets which the Labour Council has invested into a team to specifically clear those fly tips as well, as previously they were not, and our Environmental Enforcement Officers issuing Public Space Protection Orders for large fly tipping on private land so those land owners are legally obliged to clear up the mess on their land, all this activity has vastly increased fly tipping reporting.”\n<\/p>\n

\n He added: “It shows that the Labour administration is cleaning up the borough as we had promised in our local manifesto.\n<\/p>\n

\n “Now under Labour the figures show that we are taking fly tipping seriously and getting these incidents reported. Of course, many on unadopted streets and private land had been there for years, but now they are being tackled, reported and cleared.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Incidents of fly tipping were up by 20x in Bolton between 2020 and 2025, according to data from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-453113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}