Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced a nationwide crackdown<\/a> on waste crime and plans to clean up three more of the largest illegal tips in England.<\/p>\nIn total, six supersites have been earmarked to be cleared using public money, but they will be assessed first. They are: <\/p>\n
Power Station Road – Isle of Sheppey, Kent<\/p>\n
Aymer Close – Runnymede, Surrey<\/p>\n
Midland Road – Bradford, West Yorkshire<\/p>\n
Alan Ramsbottom Way – Hyndburn, Lancashire<\/p>\n
Worthing Road – Sheffield, South Yorkshire<\/p>\n
Bolton House Road – Bickershaw, Greater Manchester<\/p>\n
Environment secretary Dame Angela Eagle said: “After years of waste crime being allowed to fester, we are taking decisive action.<\/p>\n
“By putting more officers on the frontline and using drones to catch offenders in the act, we’re putting the criminal gangs on notice that there is nowhere left to hide.”<\/p>\n
But many more illegal supersites remain – and it is not known if or when they will be cleared up, and who will be made to pay. <\/p>\n
This includes one supersite in the countryside of Over, Gloucestershire, which Charlie Coats, chairman of Highnam Parish Council, is calling for the Environment Agency to also deal with.<\/p>\n
He told the BBC that the amount of money taken from waste criminals was “derisory” and added: “It acts as absolutely no deterrent whatsoever because the income that they can derive from this dwarfs anything by way of any fine.”<\/p>\n
Gavin Lane, president of the CLA, which represents around 28,000 landowners, farmers and rural businesses across England and Wales – who are often left paying the cost of clean-up – also called for more to be done to make the criminals foot the bill.<\/p>\n
“The punishment has to be real: seize their vehicles, recover the money they owe and make waste crime a losing business,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Environment Agency told the BBC that some of the unpaid confiscation orders were outstanding “because they are still within the six-month payment period allowed for settlement” and the failure to pay was a matter for the courts.<\/p>\n
It added that more money could still be seized if further information is uncovered about the offenders’ assets.<\/p>\n
Four men have so far been arrested in connection with the illegal waste tip at Kidlington. All have since been released while the investigation continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government estimates that 20% of waste in England is illegally managed. In the Waste Crime Action Plan,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-751967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751967","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=751967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}