Defra Publish New Crime Waste Action Plan for England
On Friday 20 March Defra unveiled a Waste Crime Action Plan, which sets out a national strategy to tackle waste crime in England.
The Plan outlines actions under three core objectives:
✓ Prevent
✓ Enforce
✓ Remediate
More information which are outlined as follows:
1) Preventing Waste Crime
The government aims to reduce the opportunity for waste crime through stronger regulatory reform, tools data and capabilities and further research for prevention. Measures include:
- Tightening rules for waste carriers, brokers and dealers to close loopholes exploited by criminals.
- Introducing digital waste tracking to improve traceability and accountability across the waste chain.
- Removing 3 waste permit exemptions and tightening conditions of 7 others that have been exploited in the past.
- Equipping regulators and local authorities with improved early-intervention powers such as deregistering authorisations or suspending and revoking permits, allowing the Environmental Agency to permanently cease operations.
- Expanding tax-check rules to the waste sector, ensuring that unregistered or non-compliant operators can no longer undercut legitimate businesses and evade tax.
- Launching an online Waste Hub to make data on known illegal waste activities accessible and transparent to public.
2) Strengthening Enforcement
The Action Plan sets out a more robust enforcement framework, supported by more boots on the ground, enforcement powers, cutting edge technology and data and appropriate punishment:
- The Environment Agency is receiving £45 million additional enforcement funding over three years.
- The government is exploring police-style powers for the EA, enabling officers to arrest suspects, seize assets and search premises without a warrant.
- Expanded use of drones and advance technology to locate and map illegal waste sites.
- Tougher penalties: offenders may be required to join clean-up squads and repay costs of waste site clearance, as well as publicly naming and shaming illegal waste operators and awarding penalty points on driving licenses for fly-tipping offences.
- Exploring mechanisms by which the government and enforcement bodies can share information with banks to inform them of waste criminality.
3) Accelerating clean-up of Illegal waste sites
The government plans to intervene directly in the worst cases, including using public funding for clearing the top illegal waste sites and providing additional remediation support.
- Initial sites identified include locations in Wigan, Sheffield and Hyndburn, where combined 48,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste will be cleared.
- A Landfill Tax rebate will support local authorities that undertake site clearances.
- New insurance models are being explored to better protect landowners affected by illegal dumping.
The full Action Plan can be accessed here.