{"id":525549,"date":"2026-03-15T20:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T20:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/525549\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T20:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T20:02:11","slug":"fly-tipping-plan-to-give-environment-officers-police-style-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/525549\/","title":{"rendered":"Fly-tipping: Plan to give environment officers police-style powers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Currently, fly-tipping is a criminal offence, under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.<\/p>\n

Under new legislation, people caught transporting and dealing with waste illegally will face up to five years in prison.<\/p>\n

Ministers are looking to expand powers for the Environment Agency and its enforcement officers under existing legislation including the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.<\/p>\n

Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said the government is “taking decisive action” to “stop waste criminals in their tracks and bring those responsible swiftly to justice”.<\/p>\n

Ministers would look to introduce the changes when parliamentary time allows, she added.<\/p>\n

Tim Farron MP, Liberal Democrat’s spokesperson for Environment welcomed the plans to expand Environment Agency powers, but warned it “does not go far enough”.<\/p>\n

He called for the National Crime Agency to “take over” investigations from the EA, adding: “Half measures will simply not cut it – people are fed up with this environmental vandalism.”<\/p>\n

It comes as new measures were proposed<\/a> by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on Saturday that could see drivers in England, Scotland and Wales given penalty points on their licences if caught fly-tipping. Licence holders can be disqualified from driving if they build up 12 or more penalty points within a period of three years.<\/p>\n

The former Conservative government proposed a similar initiative in 2024<\/a> and also increased penalties for fly-tipping.<\/p>\n

Environmental charity, Keep Britain Tidy says fly-tipping is defined as the illegal deposit of any waste on to land that does not have a licence to accept it and costs councils millions of pounds each year to clear up.<\/p>\n

The Environmental Services Association estimates, the cost to the economy to tackle the waste was around \u00a31bn a year in England.<\/p>\n

According to government figures from the year 2024 to 2025, councils in England dealt with 1.26 million fly-tipping incidents, of which 62% involved of household waste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Currently, fly-tipping is a criminal offence, under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Under new legislation, people caught transporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-525549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}