© Barking and Dagenham Council

Fly tippers face having their cars, vans and trucks being seized and crushed under a Government crackdown.

Councils will fight the blight of tippers with drones, mobile CCTV cameras.

Offenders will lose their vehicles until a prosecution is completed.

Courts will be given the powers to permanently seize a vehicle or order its destruction.

Offenders also face being handed the bill for the cost of impounding their vehicle during the investigation process and prosecution.

Waste operators who illegally tip rubbish face up to five years in jail.

Criminals caught transporting and illegally handling waste face a similar sentence.

Fly-tippers and “cowboy” waste handlers cost England’s councils nearly £60 million a year to clean-up

Steve Reed, Environment Secretary, said:

“Waste criminals and fly-tippers who blight our towns and villages have gone unpunished for too long.

“That ends today.

“The Government is calling time on fly-tipping.

“I will not stand by while this avalanche of rubbish buries our communities.

“Under the Plan for Change this Government will seize and crush fly-tippers’ vans’ to clean up Britain’s streets.”

Fly-tipping is a significant and persistent problem across England.

According to the latest government data, local authorities in England dealt with more than one million fly-tipping incidents in the most recent year reported (2023/24).

That’s roughly  3,157 incidents every single day, or one every 27 seconds1.