This statistical notice provides statistics on fly-tipping incidents recorded by Local Authorities in England, for April 2023 to March 2024. It covers trends in the number of fly-tipping incidents, with a breakdown by land type, waste type and size. It also covers enforcement and prosecution actions undertaken for fly-tipping incidents. It excludes the large-scale incidents dealt with by the Environment Agency and the majority of private-land incidents.

Local authority fly-tipping enforcement league tables are no longer being produced and published as part of this release. However, the underlying data on which these league tables were based, continue to be published.

2. Background on data reporting and data caveats

These data are based on incidents and actions reported by local authorities through WasteDataFlow. The intention is to capture all fly-tipping incidents, whether reported by staff or customers, and all enforcement actions taken by local authorities in response to fly-tipping incidents.

Local authorities gather their data from a number of different sources, and data can often be collected and reported by separate teams. There is a level of discretion in applying the reporting guidance. This can lead to some differences in how local authorities record incidents and enforcement actions. The nature of fly-tipping means that there can be relatively high variation between years and between local authorities. Changes in data collection and reporting over time mean that trends should be interpreted with caution.

As part of our annual quality assurance, we reminded local authorities this year that FPNs issued solely for littering should not be reported through WasteDataFlow. This may have contributed to the reduction in total number of FPNs reported by some local authorities.

We were aware that a small number of local authorities provided incident data based on either customer reported fly-tips only, or just those incidents reported by staff, rather than the combined total or ‘all incidents’. Incident data from 2018/19 and earlier included estimates for ‘all incidents’ for these local authorities. However, to improve transparency in the reported data, we undertook an exercise with all local authorities for the 2019/20 data, and discovered 90% of local authorities were reporting ‘all incidents’. From 2019/20, for those local authorities that are not reporting ‘all incidents’, no estimates have been made for ‘all incidents’. The figures presented in this statistical notice are all based on the new, unadjusted methodology. The reporting basis for each local authority is available in the published dataset. For more detail, see the Reporting basis section.

2.1 Revisions

In this publication, revisions have been made to the 2022/23 data for the following local authorities:

• Colchester - missing enforcement actions data has been added.
• County Durham - the number of littering fixed penalty notices issued in conjunction with fly-tipping have been updated.
• Epsom and Ewell - the number of littering fixed penalty notices issued in conjunction with fly-tipping have been updated.
• Rother - various updates to the number of enforcement actions.
• South Derbyshire - updates to the number of fly-tipping incidents and actions.
• Southwark - the number of fly-tipping incidents has been updated.
• Sutton - various updates to the number of enforcement actions.
• Torbay - the number of littering fixed penalty notices issued in conjunction with fly-tipping and the number of fly-tipping fixed penalty notices issued have been updated.

These revisions have been made due to new or revised data being received from the local authorities after publication in March 2024.

These data revisions affect the total number of incidents and the breakdowns for incidents, as well as the total number of enforcement actions and the breakdowns for actions

For more detail, please see the revisions section.

2.2 Impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) on fly-tipping

The 2020/21 reporting period covered the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this may have had an impact on incidents and actions for that year. This may affect comparability with figures from other years, especially as the effect on subsequent years is unknown.

2.3 Assessing the figures

Comparisons between local authorities should be made with care. In assessing the figures, local authorities should not be classified as ‘good’ or ‘poor’ performers based purely on numbers of fly-tips. The situation is complex and can be influenced by population density, housing stock, demographics and commuter routes. Those reporting higher incident numbers are often those being more pro-active and rigorous in identifying incidents by encouraging the public to report incidents, training of street crews, and increased use of more sophisticated methods for capturing and reporting incidents.

Defra is aware that the definitions used to describe fly-tips and enforcement actions in the guidance are interpreted broadly by local authorities, and that changes in staffing, data collection methods, and cyber-crime have led to reporting errors in the past.

Trends over time for a particular local authority may be a fairer comparison but many local authorities have changed the way they capture and report fly-tips over the past few years, so the changes over time should still be interpreted with some care. A time series of total incidents for each local authority is available for download. The detailed dataset makes clear the reporting basis for each local authority.

Cost data is only published for clearance costs for ‘tipper lorry load’ and ‘significant/multi load’ incident categories and enforcement costs for ‘prosecutions’ and ‘injunctions’ action categories, which are reported directly by local authorities.

Please note that due to high numbers of incidents being reported as ‘other unidentified’ for land type and waste type in 2023/24, some caution is needed in the interpretation of year-on-year changes.

Percentage changes presented in this statistical notice are based on unrounded figures.

Further information about the data is available at the end of this release.

3. Total number of fly-tipping incidents in England

Figure 1: Total number of fly-tipping incidents in England, 2018/19 to 2023/24

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

Download the data for this chart

In 2023/24 there were 1.15 million fly-tipping incidents reported, an increase of 6% from 1.08 million in 2022/2023 (Figure 1).

Incidents involving the Environment Agency or cleared by private landowners are not included in this notice. In 2023/24 the Environment Agency dealt with 103 incidents of large-scale, illegal dumping.

Figure 2: Fly-tipping incidents per 1,000 people in England by region, 2023/24, compared to 2022/23

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

Download the data for this chart

Figure 2 shows that in 2023/24 there were on average 20 fly-tipping incidents per 1,000 people in England. London had the highest average number of incidents per 1,000 people at 50, while the South West had the lowest at 9 incidents per 1,000 people.

4. Fly-tipping incidents in England by land type

Figure 3: Fly-tipping incidents by land type in England, 2023/24, compared to 2022/23

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

Download the data for this chart

Figure 3 shows the number of fly-tipping incidents by land type for 2022/23 and 2023/24. Highways (pavements and roads) have consistently been the most common land type for fly-tipping incidents over time, accounting for 37% of all incidents in 2023/24. In 2023/24 there were 427,000 incidents, a decrease of 1% from 2022/23 (433,000 incidents).

Fly-tipping on footpaths and bridleways was the next most common land type for fly-tipping incidents, accounting for 19% of all incidents, with council land next (17%). Footpath and bridleway incidents increased by 20% to 218,000 from 182,000 incidents in 2022/23. Incidents on council land such as housing estates, car parks, parks and offices increased by 3% to 197,000 incidents, in 2023/24, from 191,000 in 2022/23.

Fly-tipping incidents in back alleyways amounted to a further 9% of all incidents (105,000 incidents) in 2023/24, an increase of 3% from 103,000 in the previous year.

Please note that due to high numbers of incidents being reported as ‘other unidentified’ for land type in 2023/24, some caution is needed in the interpretation of year-on-year changes. In 2023/24, 180,000 incidents were reported as ‘other unidentified’; this type of waste accounted for 16% of total incidents.

5. Fly-tipping incidents in England by waste type

The majority of fly-tipping incidents are household waste (the sum of ‘black bags’ and ‘other’), which in 2023/24 accounted for 60% of all incidents (Figure 4). The majority of this was ‘household waste (other)’.

Figure 4: Household and commercial waste in England, 2022/23 and 2023/24 (% of total incidents)

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

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Figure 4 shows the number of fly-tipping incidents for household and commercial waste, for 2022/23 and 2023/24. Total household waste increased by 5% from 654,000 incidents in 2022/23 to 688,000 incidents in 2023/24. The household waste sub-categories, ‘black bags’ and ‘other’ increased by 23,000 incidents (14%) and 11,000 incidents (2%), respectively.

There were 74,000 incidents involving commercial waste in 2023/24, accounting for 6% of total incidents (Figure 4). This was a decrease of 5% from the 78,000 incidents reported in 2022/23. There were 34,000 incidents of commercial waste in black bags and 39,000 incidents of other commercial waste in 2023/24.

Types of fly-tipping, other than household and commercial waste amount to 34% of all fly-tipping incidents.

Figure 5: Types of other fly-tipping in England, 2023/24, compared to 2022/23

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

Download the data for this chart

Figure 5 shows the number of fly-tipping incidents by type, other than household and commercial waste, for 2022/23 and 2023/24. Please note that due to high numbers of incidents being reported as ‘other unidentified’ for waste type in 2023/24, some caution is needed in the interpretation of year-on-year changes. In 2023/24, 186,000 incidents were reported as ‘other unidentified’; this type of waste accounted for 16% of total incidents.

For some waste types, such as green waste (which includes vegetation/pruning, clean soil, tree trunks and branches) or electrical goods, it is not always possible to tell whether they originated from households or businesses.

The number of white goods incidents in 2023/24 was 54,000, an increase of 8% from the 50,000 reported in 2022/23. White good incidents accounted for 5% of total incidents in 2023/24. Green waste accounted for 3% of total incidents in 2023/24. Tyre incidents accounted for around 1% of total incidents in 2023/24.

Incidents with construction/demolition/excavation material increased by 8% from 2022/23 to 62,000 incidents in 2023/24.

Vehicle parts, animal carcasses, clinical waste, asbestos, and ‘chemical drums, oil and fuel’ incidents each account for less than 1% of total incidents.

6. Fly-tipping incidents in England by size

Incidents recorded by size category relate to those investigated and cleared by the local authority. For a number of reasons, but primarily due to incidents on private land, which an authority may not clear, total incidents by size category may not match total incidents recorded by land type or waste type.

Figure 6: Fly-tipping incidents by size in England 2023/24, compared to 2022/23

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

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Figure 6 shows the number of fly-tipping incidents by size for 2022/23 and 2023/24. As in 2022/23, ‘small van load’ was the largest size category in 2023/24, with 31% of incidents (351,000 incidents) reported being this size, this is a 9% increase on 322,000 incidents in 2022/23.

The second-largest size category is equivalent to a ‘car boot or less’. Fly-tipping incidents of this size increased by 11% from 283,000 incidents in 2022/23 to 315,000 incidents in 2023/24 and made up 28% of all incidents.

‘Single items’, such as furniture, mattresses etc. accounted for 16% of total incidents and have increased by 10% from 162,000 incidents in 2022/23 to 179,000 in 2023/24.

In 2023/24 ‘Single black bag’ size incidents accounted for 8% of total incidents and have increased by 18%, from 72,000 incidents in 2022/23 to 85,000 incidents in 2023/24.

In 2023/24 ‘Transit van Load’ incidents accounted for 13% of total incidents and have decreased by 10%, from 169,000 incidents in 2022/23 to 152,000 incidents in 2023/24.

In 2023/24, 47,000 or 4% of total incidents were of ‘tipper lorry load’ size or larger, which is an increase of 11% from 42,000 in 2022/23. For these large fly-tipping incidents, the cost of clearance to local authorities in England in 2023/24 was £13.1 million.

As noted above, we no longer produce estimates of clearance costs for other size categories. Please see the methodology section for further details.

7. Fly-tipping enforcement and prosecution

Figure 7: Fly-tipping enforcement actions in England, 2018/19 to 2023/24

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra

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Figure 7 shows the number of fly-tipping enforcement actions broken down by type. There were 528,000 enforcement actions carried out in England in 2023/24, a small decrease from 530,000 in 2022/23. It should be noted that multiple actions can sometimes be carried out on one particular incident.

Total enforcement costs have not been estimated for 2023/24 as accurate costs are not available for the majority of enforcement categories.

Investigations have consistently been the most common action taken against fly-tipping incidents over time, accounting for 66% of all actions in 2023/24, with 351,000 investigations in total. This is an increase of 1% from 2022/23, where 348,000 were carried out.

There were 60,000 warning letters issued in 2023/24, and they accounted for 11% of total enforcement actions in 2023/24.

The number of duty of care inspections decreased by 12% in 2023/24, from 30,000 inspections to 27,000 inspections. This accounted for 5% of total enforcement actions in 2023/24.

A total of 24,000 statutory notices were issued in 2023/24, accounting for 4% of total enforcement actions. This was an increase of 5% from the 23,000 statutory notices issued in 2022/23.

Local authorities issued 63,000 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) in total during 2023/24 and these were the second most common enforcement action, accounting for 12% of total actions. The total number of FPNs has decreased by 5% from 67,000 in 2022/23.

In May 2016 local authorities in England were given the power to issue FPNs for fly-tipping. Prior to this date, local authorities issued fly-tippers with a range of FPNs, including in relation to littering or anti-social behaviour. Further enforcement powers were given to local authorities and the Environment Agency in January 2019, who can now issue FPNs for breaches of the household waste duty of care, where householders pass their waste to an unlicensed waste carrier. Local authorities are therefore asked to report against a variety of FPNs in connection with fly-tipping.

Figure 8: Number of Fixed Penalty Notices issued for fly-tipping, by type, in England, 2022/23 and 2023/24

Source:WasteDataFlow, Defra

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Figure 8 shows the number of FPNs issued for fly-tipping, by type. For 2023/24, 20,300 (32%) of FPNs were issued specifically for fly-tipping, 22,500 (36%) for fly-tipping in relation to littering, 6,300 (10%) for fly-tipping in relation to household duty of care and 14,200 (23%) for fly-tipping in relation to other waste offences.

As part of our annual quality assurance, we reminded local authorities this year that FPNs issued solely for littering should not be reported through WasteDataFlow. This may have contributed to the decrease in the number of FPNs reported by some local authorities.

For the 2023/24 reporting year, additional questions were added to WasteDataFlow to capture information on the level at which local authorities set their fly-tipping FPNs and if they offer a discount for early payment. These questions were voluntary, 139 (47%) local authorities provided responses to the questions. The average value, for those responding, at which the fly-tipping FPNs have been set is £520. One hundred of the local authorities responding offer a discount for early payment. The average discount amount is £196.

Table 1: Value of Fly-tipping FPNs in England, 2023/24

Fly-tipping FPN amount	Number of local authorities
Under £400	19
£400	81
£401 to £999	10
£1000 and over	29

Source:WasteDataFlow, Defra

Table 1 shows the different values of fly-tipping FPNs set by those local authorities who responded. The majority (81) of local authorities have set the value of their fly-tipping FPN at £400.

The number of prosecution actions has decreased by 5% from 1,681 in 2022/23 to 1,598 in 2023/24 (Table 2). Costs of prosecution actions in 2023/24 were £849,000, a small increase from £847,000 recorded in 2022/23.

Table 2: Fly-tipping prosecution outcomes in England, 2018/19 to 2023/24

Year	Fines Issued	Absolute or Conditional Discharge	Other (successful outcomes)	Community Service	Custodial Sentence	Cases Lost	Total Prosecutions	Successful Prosecutions
2018/19	1,659	80	109	40	26	101	2,005	95.0%
2019/20	1,657	58	95	44	41	50	1,930	97.4%
2020/21	621	33	36	15	5	25	721	96.5%
2021/22	1,798	56	63	30	20	37	1,960	98.1%
2022/23	1,491	55	58	34	21	46	1,681	97.3%
2023/24	1,378	56	78	22	28	47	1,598	97.1%

Download the data for this table

Table 2 shows that the success rates for prosecution actions against fly-tipping are consistently very high over time. In 2023/24, 97.1% of prosecutions resulted in a conviction.

The majority of prosecution outcomes are fines, which were issued for 86% of the prosecutions taken against fly-tipping incidents in 2023/24. The number of court fines decreased by 8% from 1,491 in 2022/23 to 1,378 in 2023/24, with the value of total fines decreasing by 7% from £785,000 in 2022/23 to £730,000 in 2023/24. The average court fine has increased from £526 to £530, in 2023/24.

The number of community service outcomes decreased by 35% from 34 in 2022/23 to 22 in 2023/24.

8. What you need to know about this release

8.1 Contact details

8.2 Official Statistics

This is an Official Statistics publication. Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You can read about how Official Statistics in Defra comply with these standards on the Defra Statistics website.

You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards using the contact details above. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.

9. About these statistics

Fly-tipping is the illegal deposit of waste on land, contrary to Section 33(1)(a) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Local authorities and the Environment Agency both have a responsibility in respect of illegally deposited waste. This includes local authorities and the Environment Agency collecting and reporting data on fly-tipping. This statistical notice covers data reported by local authorities in England.

9.1 User Statement

Data on fly-tipping is collected to inform policy making and to help local authorities understand what is happening in their area. It records the number of fly-tipping incidents, the type of material tipped, location and size, together with enforcement action taken. The data are used by local and central government, researchers and the public.

9.2 Context

Fly-tipping is a crime, a significant blight on local communities and a source of environmental harm. It also undermines legitimate waste businesses where unscrupulous operators undercut those operating within the law.

Local authorities and the Environment Agency both have a responsibility in respect of illegally deposited waste with certain obligations set out in the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Local authorities have a duty to clear fly-tipped material from relevant land in their areas and consequently they deal with the vast majority of fly-tipping on public land. They can investigate fly-tipping incidents, including incidents on private land, and carry out a range of enforcement actions. The Environment Agency is responsible for dealing with large-scale, serious and organised illegal dumping incidents or those which pose an immediate threat to human health or the environment. Responsibility for clearing fly-tipping material from private land rests with private landowners and is not subject to mandatory data reporting.

Incidents involving the Environment Agency or cleared by private landowners are not included in this notice. In 2023/24 the Environment Agency dealt with 103 incidents of large-scale, illegal dumping.

9.3 Impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) on fly-tipping

The 2020/21 reporting period covered the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first national lockdown introduced in March 2020 led to some local authorities being unable to maintain collections of dry recyclates, with some suspending garden and bulky waste collections. There was also a widespread closure of household waste recycling centres (HWRCs). These factors and other factors such as changes in household consumption, travel and leisure patterns may have contributed to the increases seen in the number of fly-tipping incidents reported for 2020/21.

Staff shortages, staff being furloughed, and staff being redeployed may also have impacted on the number of enforcement actions which were carried out during 2020/21. Courts were also closed at certain points of the reporting period which several local authorities reported had an impact on the number of prosecution actions undertaken.

This may affect comparability with figures from other years, especially as the effect on subsequent years is unknown.

9.4 Methodology

These statistics are based on the returns made to the Fly-tipping Module in the WasteDataFlow database by local authorities in England from April 2023 to March 2024. The Fly-tipping Module is the national system used since 2015 to record the incidents and cost of clearing and enforcing against illegally deposited waste by local authorities. Detailed guidance is available on the use of WasteDataFlow. Private landowners are not required to report fly-tips on their land, although some choose to do so voluntarily.

It should be noted that the private land data included in this notice do not reflect the full scale of fly-tipping on private land, as most cases go unreported.

Local authorities gather their data from a number of sources and departments. Incidents are reported by the public through call centres or online, operatives on the ground collecting and recording, enforcement officers, contractors and management companies. Many authorities await verification from investigations before recording public reports as fly-tips.

Data are requested in respect of incidents cleared or investigated by local authorities and, separately, the enforcement actions taken against fly-tippers. These can often be collected and reported by separate teams. Therefore, data can be entered onto the system by one or more persons within an authority. This may lead to some discrepancies and a level of uncertainty. Data verification and quality assurance is carried out by WasteDataFlow personnel and Defra. This is done by a quarterly check of specific aspects of the data to identify significant anomalies which would be queried with authorities.

Until 2017/18, estimate costs for the majority of clearance and enforcement categories were calculated based on typical unit costs for dealing with the different types of incidents/actions. Costs were provided by a small selection of local authorities between 2003 and 2006 when the Flycapture database was being set up. These were used to generate standard unit costs for the clearance and enforcement categories, which were then multiplied up by the numbers of incidents and enforcement actions respectively, in order to generate total cost estimates. The standard unit costs used are detailed in the accompanying notes to the published datasets.

In August 2015 Defra undertook an exercise to update the cost basis by surveying 100 local authorities that had previously indicated a willingness to participate. Unfortunately, both the quantity and quality of response data was insufficient to provide robust factors as replacements. During 2017, Defra carried out some preliminary investigations to source updated costs, but concluded that more targeted and detailed work is required to properly understand the complexities surrounding costs to local authorities. As the standard unit costs are now more than 10 years out of date, the decision has been taken to cease using these from the 2017/18 publication onwards. For the time being only costs for clearance categories ‘tipper lorry load’ and ‘significant/multi loads’, and enforcement categories ‘prosecutions’ and ‘injunctions’ (which are reported directly by local authorities) will continue to be published.

9.5 Detailed breakdowns

A breakdown of data for each local authority is available on the Defra website. In assessing the figures local authorities should not be classified as ‘good’ or ‘poor’ performers based purely on numbers of fly-tips. Comparisons between local authorities should be made with care. The situation is complex and can be influenced by population density, housing stock, demographics and commuter routes. Those reporting higher incident numbers are often those being more pro-active and rigorous in identifying incidents by encouraging the public to report incidents, training of street crews, and increased use of more sophisticated methods for capturing and reporting incidents. Defra is also aware that the definitions used to describe fly-tips and enforcement actions in the guidance are interpreted broadly by local authorities, and that changes in staffing, data collection methods, and cyber-crime have led to reporting errors in the past.

Trends over time for a particular local authority may be a fairer comparison but many local authorities have changed the way they capture and report fly-tips over the past few years, so the changes over time should still be interpreted with some care. A time series of total incidents for each local authority is available for download. There can be relatively high variation between years and between local authorities.

From 2019/20, incidents per 1,000 people for each local authority have been included in the published dataset.

9.6 Reporting basis

Under Section 71(4) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 local authorities are required to report information on fly-tipping incidents and actions taken through WasteDataFlow. Details of all fly-tipping incidents, reports, and actions should be reported via WasteDataFlow, including customer reported and those reported by, and pro-actively cleared by staff and contractors.

We had been aware of a few local authorities who were not reporting all incidents or who had changed their basis of reporting.

For the 2019/20 reporting year, Defra undertook a check with all local authorities around the basis of reporting in order to improve transparency in the reported data. An additional question was added to WasteDataFlow to capture the reporting basis for each local authority. The question included was as follows:

The data entries in the Fly-tipping module are a record of fly-tipping offences under s33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. We want you to record information for all relevant incidents and actions covering both public reported and those pro-actively cleared by your own and contractors’ crews. Please select the description that best describes the coverage of your reporting of Fly-tipping incidents and actions:

1. All incidents i.e. customer/public reported and those reported by, and pro-actively cleared by, your own and contractor crews.
2. Customer/public reported only.
3. Staff/contractor and pro-actively cleared only.

This confirmed that the majority (286; 90%) of all local authorities, in 2019/20, were reporting all incidents; 29 (9%) were providing figures based on customer reported fly-tips only, one was providing figures based just on those incidents reported by staff and one local authority had changed their basis of reporting during 2019/20.

In previous years, estimates were made for ‘all incidents’ for a small number of local authorities where it was known that the local authorities reported figures were not based on ‘all incidents’. These estimated figures were included in the national incident totals but not in the local authority level dataset.

For 2019/20 onwards, for those local authorities that are not reporting ‘all incidents’, no estimates have been made for ‘all incidents’. This was due to the number of local authorities concerned and lack of data to make reliable estimates for ‘all incidents’. This means that the national totals for 2019/20 onwards are not comparable to national totals from earlier years. In order to have comparable data for 2019/20 and 2018/19 we have removed the previous adjustments made to the 2018/19 national figures. These adjustments were made to those few local authorities that were known not to be reporting all incidents, but where the data was available to make the adjustments.

For the revised 2018/19 and the 2019/20 national totals onwards, these only include estimates for non-response and missing data.

The questions on reporting basis have been retained in WasteDataFlow to enable Defra to continue to monitor the basis of reporting. In 2023/24, 270 (91%) of local authorities were reporting all incidents; 24 (8%) were providing figures based on customer reported fly-tips only and two local authorities had changed their basis of reporting during 2023/24.

We will continue to encourage local authorities to make all reasonable efforts to report all incidents in future years.

Data on enforcement and prosecution actions is not affected by the methodological change and the time series is presented in this notice.

9.7 Non-response and estimation

In 2023/24, 295 local authorities provided data on fly-tipping incidents and actions. Isle of Wight did not submit data for quarter four of 2023/24, so an estimate was made by Defra for this quarter. Estimates were made based on the proportions of their data from the first three quarters of 2023/24.

For 2023/24, five local authorities did not submit data on clearance costs for ‘tipper lorry load’ and/or ‘significant/multi load’ incidents for some or all quarters. These were estimated by Defra based on previous quarters’ data where the figures were consistent or using average 2023/24 unit costs from the known returns or otherwise using an average of previous years’ data for these local authorities. These five local authorities were Bristol, North Somerset, South Cambridgeshire, Swale and Tunbridge Wells.

Two local authorities did not submit data on enforcement cost for ‘prosecutions’ for some or all quarters. These were estimated based on using average 2023/24 unit costs from the known returns. These two local authorities were Canterbury and West Northamptonshire.

Estimates for clearance, enforcement costs and non-response are included in the national totals but are not shown in the local authority dataset.

9.8 Feedback

We welcome feedback on the data from all users including how and why the data is used. This helps us to understand the value of the statistics to external users. Please see our contact details section of this notice.

9.9 Revisions Policy

Defra will provide information about any revisions made to published information in this statistics release and the associated datasets. Revisions could occur for various reasons, including when data from third parties is unavailable or revised data has been input to the Fly-tipping Module of WasteDataFlow.

In this publication, revisions have been made to the 2022/23 data for the following local authorities:

• Colchester - missing enforcement actions data has been added.
• County Durham - the number of littering fixed penalty notices issued in conjunction with fly-tipping have been updated.
• Epsom and Ewell - the number of littering fixed penalty notices issued in conjunction with fly-tipping have been updated.
• Rother - various updates to the number of enforcement actions.
• South Derbyshire - updates to the number of fly-tipping incidents and actions.
• Southwark - the number of fly-tipping incidents has been updated.
• Sutton - various updates to the number of enforcement actions.
• Torbay - the number of littering fixed penalty notices issued in conjunction with fly-tipping and the number of fly-tipping fixed penalty notices issued have been updated.

A detailed summary of the changes for each local authority can be found on the ‘Revisions’ tabs on each of the accompanying datasets.

These data revisions affect the total number of incidents and the breakdowns for incidents, as well as the total number of enforcement actions and the breakdowns for actions

Tables 3 shows the impact the revisions have on some of the national totals for some key categories.

Table 3: Impact on some national totals for 2022/23

Category	England Totals -March 2024 publication	England Totals -February 2025 publication
Total Incidents	1,082,673	1,084,044
Total Enforcement Actions	531,595	529,715
FPNs for flytipping	20,664	20,937
Fixed Penalty Notices issued for Household Duty of Care	4,668	4,668
Littering FPNs issued in conjunction with fly-tipping	27,228	25,768
All Other FPNs issued	16,010	15,288
Total FPNs Actions	68,570	66,661

Source: WasteDataFlow, Defra