Changing, always changing
Recent changes in legislation have addressed many of the concerns of local authorities with respect to fly tipping, fly posting, litter and dog fouling in designated areas and have confirmed local authorities' key role in tackling these crimes. Much has been said about Anti-Social Behaviour and legislation is now in place to combat this. Anti-social behaviour is not limited to a certain age range but is prevalent across the demographic range.
Local authorities, through their association (the Local Government Association), have been in discussions with the Environment Agency about fly tipping and a revised protocol for dealing with this problem has been drawn up. This protocol is part of the wider Working Better Together agreement that covers a wider range of issues. These include:
- Air Quality Management,
- Management of Flood Risk,
- Waste strategy and waste management planning and
- Town and Country Planning.
Local authorities actually have more powers than the Environment Agency.
The fly tipping protocol clarifies the respective roles of local authorities and the Agency as they work in partnership to tackle this issue. Under the protocol, local authorities have the lead role in tackling most incidents of fly tipping, while the Environment Agency will focus its resources on investigating and taking appropriate enforcement action against large-scale illegal dumping of waste, organised criminal involvement in waste crime and the dumping of certain special and hazardous wastes - the 'big, bad and nasty'.
We have devised a simple way of determining whether the local authority or Environment Agency are responsible for a particular type of fly tipping. Click here to view >>
With more incidents being reported to, and dealt with, by local authorities more cases will be prosecuted. Magistrates, who until now, have not seen many incidents of enviro crime before them in Court should be encouraged to rigorously enforce the relevant legislation.
The ultimate aim of the current project is to make would-be fly tippers in Lancashire & North Merseyside manage their waste lawfully or, if they do fly-tip, to face the consequences.