Three of the country’s worst illegal dumps are due to be cleaned up using taxpayers’ money, the government has announced.
Sites in Kent, Surrey and West Yorkshire will be assessed for clearance, with Prime Minister Andy Burnham saying the “toxic dumps have blighted communities for too long”.
Fines for waste offences will also rise from £300 to £5,000 to deter, catch, and punish those who dump illegally, and the Environment Agency will have more powers to seize assets bought with the proceeds of crime by those involved.
But opposition parties said illegal dumps were a small part of a much bigger issue with smaller scale fly-tipping and landfill all posing big problems for communities.
Burnham is looking to build on work started by his predecessor Sir Keir Starmer to tackle waste crime, with an action plan published in March detailing a series of measures – including using drones to map illegal waste sites.
Sir Keir’s administration had announced that sites in Wigan, Sheffield and Lancashire would have government clean-ups – alongside Kidlington in Oxfordshire where removal of 20,000 tonnes of waste started in April.
The government said the new sites identified for clearance contain around 22,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste.
They are: Power Station Road, on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent; Aymer Close, in Runnymede, Surrey; and Midland Road in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester will be the first areas with new region-led approaches to waste crime.
The government said this will give mayors and council leaders the lead in co-ordinating councils, police, regulators, and other enforcement agencies.
Speaking on a visit to the waste dump in West Yorkshire, Burnham said: “We’ve begun a much more networked approach to this, where we’re bringing the National Crime Agency in to work with the Environment Agency, increasing the penalties and bearing down now on the organised crime that lies behind some of what you see behind me.”
The prime minister said the aim was to build intelligence about criminals linked to waste dumps at an earlier stage, to avoid the public being charged for clean-ups.
“We should be getting in much earlier, apprehending them, using all of the intelligence that comes through that investigation to make sure the polluter pays,” he added.
A new “waste crime crackdown group”, chaired by Environment Secretary Angela Eagle, will bring regulators and law enforcement together in a bid to dismantle criminal operations.
Eagle said: “We are cleaning up sites, but we are also stopping the cycle, driving faster prevention and disruption, better intelligence, and stronger coordination across the system.”