Fly-tipping cases rise in South East again
Number of incidents on public land exceeds 100,000 a year, with some areas up 75%
The number of fly-tipping cases in parts of the South East have shot up by 75% in a year, new figures reveal.
Newly-released figures from Defra today show that there were more than a million incidents of fly-tipping on public land in the last year – and 100,000 in the South East alone.
Councils in England dealt with 1.15 million fly-tipping incidents in 2023/2024, though these figures only account for waste illegally dumped on public land that has been reported to the authorities.
In the South East, a number of boroughs and districts suffered a large rise in incidents, including:
- Crawley rose by 32%
- Mid Sussex up 76%
- Runnymede up 74%
- Maidstone up 19%
- Portsmouth up 45%
- Buckinghamshire up 30%
- Windsor and Maidenhead up 52%
- Oxford up 53%.
CLA South East Regional Director Tim Bamford has appeared on BBC Radio Sussex and BBC Radio Surrey discussing the impact dumped waste has on farmers, the environment and rural communities.
Colin Rayner, whose family farm in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Surrey, said they suffer from incidents every day.
He added: “We have made our farms into medieval forts to try to reduce large loads of waste been tipped on the farms.
"The cost to the family in terms of extra security, clearing up the waste and threats from the fly-tipping gangs is too much to bear at times.”
Read more analysis from the CLA here.