There needs to be an urgent review of the process for prosecuting fly-tipping offenders, according to Jason Mohr, MD and founder of AnyJunk, Britain’s largest rubbish clearance company, which has just released its 2011 Fly-tipping Report.
Mr Mohr said their analysis – which is the result of a survey across England’s local council areas and London boroughs – found that whilst fly-tipping instances fell an encouraging 15% last year, they still cost the country £36m in clear-up costs and only a mere 0.4% were successfully prosecuted.
“Less than 2,500 successful prosecutions out of 650,000 or fly tipping incidents is such a low hit rate that it cannot be acting as a major deterrent to fly tippers. The laws and processes available to councils to prosecute fly tippers need to be reviewed urgently, because the current system isn’t working,” commented Mr Mohr.
The Government’s recent Waste Policy Review 2011 includes an intention to introduce powers to seize vehicles of fly tippers and to review the penalties available, including offenders clearing up items they’ve dumped.
“Although I’m glad to see fly tipping mentioned in the Review”, says Mr Mohr, “surely the first thing to improve is the prosecution process itself rather than the penalties following a prosecution - because so few cases are actually getting to the penalty stage?”
“Relying on the criminal justice system to deal with fly tipping imposes a much higher burden of proof, is slow and expensive, and evidently isn’t delivering an appropriate success rate. Perhaps a better solution would be to enable councils to prosecute directly through civil actions (similar to the fixed penalty structure used for parking offences). Fly tipping is a pretty straightforward crime – dumping waste somewhere that’s not licensed to receive it. We need a system of policing it that is just as simple,” recommends Mr Mohr, a qualified solicitor.
Mr Mohr said his company, AnyJunk, was ready and willing to help cash-strapped councils reduce their spending on fly-tip clearances by assisting them with reviewing their waste strategies and collection costs.
The full report, including comparison of prosecution rates across all councils in England, is available to download from the AnyJunk website at http://www.anyjunk.co.uk/fly-tipping