Table of contents

Approximate read time: 20 minutes

On 12 February 2026 the House of Lords is scheduled to consider the following question for short debate:

Baroness Sheehan (Liberal Democrat) to ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the performance of the Environment Agency in addressing waste crime.

1. What is waste crime?

The Environment Agency states that waste crime includes:[1]

  • dumping or burning waste
  • illegally shipping waste abroad
  • deliberately mis-describing waste (either to evade landfill tax or avoid the correct management required)
  • operating illegal waste sites

The agency has said that waste crime costs the economy in England an estimated £1bn each year.[2] The agency’s national waste crime survey 2025 said that waste industry respondents estimated that an average 20% of all waste may be illegally managed.[3] The survey also estimated that only 27% of all waste crimes were reported. The Environment Agency has said that 749 new illegal waste sites were found in 2024/25.[4] This equated to 10 new cases per week and an increase from 427 illegal waste sites found in the previous year. BBC News has also recently reported on the number of illegal waste sites in England.[5] This included 11 locations identified by a BBC investigation and described as ‘super sites’, which contain “tens of thousands of tonnes of rubbish”. The issue of illegal waste dumping has also been reported in a number of other recent press articles, for example:

2. Role of the Environment Agency

The Environment Agency was established in 1996 and is the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affair’s largest arm’s length body.[6] In England, the agency is responsible for:

  • regulating major industry and waste
  • treatment of contaminated land
  • water quality and resources
  • fisheries
  • inland river, estuary and harbour navigations
  • conservation and ecology[7]

The government has summarised the Environment Agency’s work on waste sector compliance as follows:

The Environment Agency […] takes appropriate action to bring businesses within the waste sector back into compliance and to prevent and disrupt criminal activity. This includes providing advice and guidance for businesses trying to do the right thing, issuing enforcement notices where necessary, and, when required, pursuing prosecution as a last resort.[8]

In its April 2022 report on waste crime in England, the National Audit Office (NAO) stated that the Environment Agency’s responsibilities relate to certain types of waste crime and that responsibility for the removal of waste normally lies with the landowner:

The Environment Agency […] is responsible for investigating certain types of waste crime and taking action against the perpetrators, including illegal waste sites, illegal dumping (the most serious fly-tipping incidents) and breaches of environmental permits and exemptions. Responsibility for clearing waste ultimately sits with the landowner or land manager, including local authorities and other public bodies such as National Highways. Local authorities also have powers and duties relating to fly-tipping, and deal with the majority of smaller incidents. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has responsibility for pursuing the evasion of landfill tax in England.[9]

The Environment Agency has said that its approach for managing illegal waste sites is to “triage and characterise, secure, investigate, manage impacts and where necessary escalate”.[10] It also states that the agency has recently refreshed its approach “specifically in terms of our early escalation and our speed of response for those that are triaged as higher risk, recognising that we receive hundreds of reports of illegal dumping every year”.[11]

In answer to a written question, the government has said that the Environment Agency has £12mn allocated to waste crime activities in 2025/26, plus and additional £3.6mn for enforcement of new duties including the extended producer responsibility.[12] However, the government also stated that wider core grant funding for the Environment Agency has also historically contributed to the agency’s enforcement work but is not included in this figure because it is not allocated in a way that can be specifically linked to waste crime. The Environment Agency has said that it aims to recover costs from the sector to reduce reliance on government funding:

The 2021 Environment Act enabled a proposed enforcement levy on waste permit holders. Once ministers have approved implementation plans, it is expected to raise over £3mn a year.[13]

The Environment Agency is also one of the 13 organisations that make up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC).[14] JUWC is a multi-agency taskforce which works in partnership to tackle serious and organised crime in the UK waste industry. The JUWC sets out its priorities as follows:

  • prepare: reduce the impact of waste criminality where it takes place
  • prevent: prevent people from engaging in serious and organised crime
  • protect: our interventions and activity will protect the UK’s critical infrastructure, environment, and communities
  • pursue: prosecute and disrupt people engaged in serious and organised criminality[15]

Other members include HMRC, the police and the National Crime Agency.

The scope of the Environment Agency’s responsibilities has recently been the subject of correspondence between the government and Baroness Sheehan, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, specifically regarding the Environment Agency’s decision to progress works to clear the illegal waste site at Kidlington, Oxfordshire but not another site at Bolton House Road, Bickershaw.[16] In her letter to Baroness Sheehan, Minister of State for Animal Welfare and Biosecurity Baroness Hayman said that it was not a responsibility of the Environment Agency to clear illegal waste sites and it was not funded to do so.[17] However, she said it had the power to clear waste in exceptional circumstances where there was significant risk to the environment. Baroness Hayman said that the agency had determined that there was a significant risk to the environment in the case of Kidlington but did not consider that the Bolton House Road site represented the same level of risk. Baroness Sheehan did not agree with the Environment Agency’s distinction between the two sites, stating that “like Kidlington, Bickershaw constitutes a grave environmental hazard, as it is demonstrably not an inert facility”.[18]

The Environment Agency has said that it shares the public’s “disgust” at the dumping of illegal waste at Kidlington.[19] The agency has set out its response, as of November 2025, to the situation in an article on its blog.[20] This included:

  • securing a court order to close the site to prevent more waste from being illegally tipped
  • working with partner agencies “to tackle this incident head-on”
  • undertaking a criminal investigation, led by the Environment Agency’s national environmental crime unit

The agency’s national waste crime survey 2025 also asked respondents about the effectiveness of the Environment Agency in its response to waste crime. In its conclusions to the survey’s results and findings report, the Environment Agency reflected that the survey found it was not effective in this regard:

Despite continuing to be considered a knowledgeable organisation, respondents to the 2025 survey felt that the Environment Agency is not effective in its response to waste crime, reinforcing the 2023 findings. Respondents felt that waste crime requires severe sanctions. Court issued penalties, visible activities, disruption tactics and criminal sanctions were again considered the most effective deterrents against waste crime, echoing the 2023 findings. Further research is required to compare this finding with the Environment Agency’s internal metrics on waste crime. Whilst there is a suggestion that reporting rates are increasing, 27% of waste crime being reported to the Environment Agency remains low, though the increase in satisfaction with follow up action (when it occurred) is encouraging.[21]

3. House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee short inquiry: Waste crime

In September 2025, the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee held a short inquiry into waste crime.[22] The committee held a series of oral evidence sessions and received written evidence.

Whilst the committee did not produce a report, the committee’s chair, Baroness Sheehan, set out its findings and eight recommendations in a policy letter to the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Emma Reynolds, on 28 October 2025.[23]

In her letter, Baroness Sheehan said the committee believed that waste crime was “critically under-prioritised despite its significant environmental, economic and social costs”.[24] She said the committee was “deeply concerned” that there was a “demonstrable inadequacy” in the current approach to addressing waste crime. Baroness Sheehan specifically referenced the Environment Agency, stating that the committee had heard “credible evidence” of “numerous specific examples” where she said the Environment Agency had failed to:

  • pursue repeated reports of serious waste crime
  • effectively utilise the powers available to it to stop the mass, illegal dumping of waste
  • bring effective, timely and successful prosecutions against the perpetrators of serious and organised waste crime

She also said the committee believed the performance of the Environment Agency played a role in what she described as failures to manage waste crime:

Regrettably, we have not been able to establish the exact cause(s) of the failures to prevent and effectively prosecute waste crime, but it is difficult to conclude that incompetence at the Environment Agency has not been a factor.

Baroness Sheehan also said that the committee was “unimpressed with the lack of interest shown by the police in fulfilling their role by bringing to bear their expertise in tackling serious and organised waste crime”. She described waste crime as a gateway into other forms of serious and organised crime.

She said the committee welcomed the government and Environment Agency’s desire to move to a circular economy as a key way to eliminate waste crime. However, she argued that “urgent interim action” was also required to address harms caused by waste crime. In oral evidence to the committee, Minister for Nature at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Mary Creagh had said that the circular economy would help prevent waste being diverted into the illegal economy:

With the Circular Economy Taskforce, we are also looking at the big picture. People want to know what happens with their bins, but we also need to think about whole economy change, so that is construction, agri-food, waste electricals, transport, textiles and building materials. All these things contribute hundreds of thousands of tonnes each year, some of which is diverted into the illegal economy. If everything has a value, there is less incentive to just pay someone £20 to take it away because someone will pay you £20 to come and collect it because it has a value.[25]

The committee’s overarching recommendation was for an independent review into waste crime:

Our overarching recommendation is that the response to waste crime, from prevention and reporting to prosecution, must be subject to a root and branch review conducted independently of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Environment Agency and HMRC. This review must consider the extent and effectiveness of integrated working among the Environment Agency, HMRC, National Crime Agency, policing and local authorities. This must also incorporate an investigation into the intelligence received and action taken in relation to the egregious events at Hoad’s Wood (a site of special scientific interest) and the six other similarly large illegal waste sites of which the Environment Agency is aware, with a clear roadmap to how further such transgressions will be prevented. Given the urgency, this review must be completed and the government to have responded at the latest by May 2027.[26]

The committee’s remaining seven recommendations included the following which specifically cited the Environment Agency:

  • To end the merry-go-round of reporting experienced by the public and enable reports to be responded to promptly, the government must work with the Environment Agency to establish a single telephone number and web portal which can receive and, in accordance with a clear decision-tree, triage and disseminate reports of waste crime regardless of their type or source.
  • The Joint Unit for Waste Crime should take immediate further steps to improve collaboration between bodies with responsibility for waste crime at the local level(especially policing, including regional organised crime units, and local government), particularly in respect of the handling of reports and sharing of intelligence, and to increase territorial police forces’ and regional organised crime units’ understanding of the severity of waste crime and its connections with other forms of serious and organised crime. The opportunities to develop stronger relationships with local authorities presented by local government reform and additional capacity in the Environment Agency’s local area teams should be seized.
  • The Environment Agency’s allocated capacity to disrupt and investigate waste crime committed outside regulated operations has been insufficient and it has been prevented from diverting resources from its regulatory work to crime enforcement by the Treasury’s rules on managing public money. Those rules, their application and their consequences should be reviewed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Treasury as a priority, and the welcome additional funding provided to the regulator in 2025/26 should be maintained. The Environment Agency should implement its proposed waste crime levy.[27]

3.1 Government response to the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee

The secretary of state responded to Baroness Sheehan’s letter on 9 December 2025.[28] Emma Reynolds said waste crime caused damage to the environment, undermined legitimate businesses, reduced tax income and “in the worst cases” could directly impact people’s health. She said that closing loopholes exploited by criminals was a government priority and it was taking action to ensure the Environment Agency “takes the necessary steps” and that she had met with the chief executive of the Environment Agency, Philip Duffy, to discuss the committee’s recommendations “and the additional actions we can take to reduce waste crime and improve our response when it does occur”. The secretary of state said that the body was being supported by a 50% increase in its resource in this financial year.

On the committee’s overarching recommendation for an independent review into waste crime, Emma Reynolds referred to current reforms the government was undertaking. She said she believed these were the most effective way to address crime in the waste sector. Ms Reynolds said that these reforms were informed by previous work, including a 2018 independent review into serious and organised crime in the waste sector.[29] She also expressed concern that a review would divert “significant resource” from the government’s planned reforms. Ms Reynolds said the government’s work was also informed by the National Audit Office’s work on waste crime, as well as the related House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report.[30]

Baroness Sheehan responded to the government’s letter on 15 December 2025. She said the committee was “deeply disappointed” with the government’s response, saying that the depth and breadth of its concerns had been overlooked.[31] She remarked that the government’s letter did not “provide timelines for the reforms [nor] explain what these options are”.

4. Recent government comments on waste crime

On 14 January 2026, the government was asked what assessment it had made of the extent of large-scale waste crime.[32]

Speaking for the government, Baroness Hayman, parliamentary under secretary of state at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that:

[…] the government are committed to tackling waste crime. The Environment Agency assesses all reports of waste crime and deploys its resources against the offending that poses the greatest threat, risk and harm. The Environment Agency recorded 176 active, high-risk, illegal waste sites at the end of March 2025. As with all criminal activity, understanding the true extent of waste crime is difficult due to its often covert nature.[33]

She set out a number of initiatives that the government and the Environment Agency were pursuing:

The government are committed to the introduction of digital waste tracking, and the analysis of data that this brings will enable us to provide a significant asset for regulators and enforcement bodies in the fight that we have against waste crime. Additionally, the Environment Agency is looking at other technology-based opportunities to measure the levels of waste crime. That could use the potential of satellite-type technology and machine learning. We are providing the Environment Agency with extra, targeted funds. My officials are also working with the Environment Agency and the Treasury on the implementation of the proposed Environment Agency levy, and we will be able to update on that in due course. Of course, we will also continue to work with the Treasury on the landfill tax policy and keep under continual review how best to tackle waste crime, including considerations around resourcing.[34]

When asked about prosecutions, Baroness Hayman said numbers were in line with other law enforcement agencies when compared with the number of interventions. However, she described prosecutions “as only one part of the picture”, highlighting the importance of prevention and disruption work at an earlier stage.

Lord Cromwell (Crossbench) expressed concern that land owners responsible for removing waste illegally dumped by others on their land often lacked the money or expertise to do so. He asked if the government had plans to assist victims of illegal waste dumping. Baroness Hayman said the government did not believe the current system was working and it needed to look at the issue further:

As I said, we do not think the status quo is working. We need to look at how tidying up and tackling waste crime, both from the start and at the clearing up end of things, are properly resourced, and at how the criminals carrying out this illegal activity are caught and dealt with. As the noble Lord said, that is difficult because of the nature of where it happens but, again, we are working across government to look at the best way to tackle this, because unless we all come together across government, we will not resolve this issue.[35]

Baroness Hayman also said that the government was investing resources in the Environment Agency:

On the Environment Agency’s role in waste crime enforcement, the total budget has increased by more than 50%—that is a £5.6mn increase from the previous year—which has allowed the EA [Environment Agency] to double the size of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, so we are investing financially to tackle this. It means that the EA has increased its overall front-line criminal enforcement resource in the JUWC and we have brought in more staff—I think the number is 43. We are investing significantly in how we are operating, but we also need to consider how we can make changes to improve the situation.[36]

5. Read more

Image by The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

References

  1. Environment Agency, ‘National waste crime survey 2025: Summary’, 23 July 2025. Return to text
  2. Environment Agency, ‘Working together to stop waste criminals’, 7 May 2025. Return to text
  3. Environment Agency, ‘National waste crime survey 2025’, 23 July 2025. Return to text
  4. Environment Agency, ‘Letter to Baroness Sheehan, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee’, 16 December 2025. Return to text
  5. Malcolm Prior and Jenny Kumah, ‘Hundreds of illegal waste tips operating in England—including 11 ‘super sites’’, BBC News, 23 January 2026. Return to text
  6. Environment Agency, ‘About us’, accessed 3 February 2026; and House of Commons, ‘Written question: Environment Agency and Office for Environmental Protection (31079)’, 13 July 2022. Return to text
  7. Environment Agency, ‘About us’, accessed 3 February 2026. Return to text
  8. House of Commons, ‘Written question: Tyres: Waste disposal (106502)’, 22 January 2026. Return to text
  9. National Audit Office, ‘Investigation into government’s actions to combat waste crime in England’, 27 April 2022. Return to text
  10. Environment Agency, ‘Letter to Baroness Sheehan, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee’, 16 December 2025, p 4. Return to text
  11. The Environment Agency has set out further information on its responsibilities regarding fly-tipping and its approach to managing illegal waste sites in annex A of its response to a letter from the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee in December 2025, regarding the committee’s short inquiry into waste crime: Environment Agency, ‘Letter to Baroness Sheehan, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee’, 16 December 2025. Return to text
  12. House of Commons, ‘Written question: Waste: Crime (107353)’, 27 January 2026. For further information on the extended producer responsibility see: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, ‘Extended producer responsibility: what’s it for?’, 2 October 2025. Return to text
  13. Environment Agency, ‘Letter to Baroness Sheehan, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee’, 16 December 2025. Return to text
  14. HM Government, ‘Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC)’, accessed 3 February 2026. Return to text
  15. As above. Return to text
  16. This followed Baroness Sheehan asking about the sites in an oral question in the House of Lords. See: HL Hansard, 14 January 2026, col 1728. See also: BBC News, ‘How the dumping of illegal waste unfolded in Kidlington’, 30 November 2025; and ‘MP calls for urgent removal of ‘toxic’ waste dump’, 15 December 2025. Return to text
  17. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, ‘Letter to Baroness Sheehan’, January 2026. Return to text
  18. House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, ‘Letter to Baroness Hayman, parliamentary under secretary of state’, 3 February 2026. Return to text
  19. Environment Agency, ‘How we’re tackling illegal waste dumping and protecting our environment’, 19 November 2025. Return to text
  20. As above. Return to text
  21. Environment Agency, ‘National waste crime survey: 2025 results and findings—chief scientist’s group report’, July 2025, p 32. Return to text
  22. House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, ‘Waste crime’, accessed 2 February 2026. Return to text
  23. House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, ‘Letter to Emma Reynolds, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, ref serious and organised waste crime’, 28 October 2025. Return to text
  24. As above. Return to text
  25. House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, ‘Oral evidence: Waste Crime’, 17 September 2025, Q56. Return to text
  26. House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, ‘Letter to Emma Reynolds, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, ref serious and organised waste crime’, 28 October 2025. Return to text
  27. As above. Return to text
  28. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, ‘Letter to Baroness Sheehan, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee’, 9 December 2025. Return to text
  29. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, ‘Serious and organised waste crime: 2018 review’, 14 November 2018. Return to text
  30. National Audit Office, ‘Investigation into government’s actions to combat waste crime in England’, 27 April 2022; and House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, ‘Government actions to combat waste crime’, 19 October 2022, HC 33 of session 2022–23; and Government response, 14 December 2022, and HM Revenue & Customs, ‘Letter to Meg Hillier, ref report on government actions to combat waste crime’, 22 December 2022. Return to text
  31. House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, ‘Letter to Emma Reynolds, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs’, 15 December 2025. Return to text
  32. HL Hansard, 14 January 2026, cols 1725–30. Return to text
  33. HL Hansard, 14 January 2026, col 1726. Return to text
  34. HL Hansard, 14 January 2026, col 1726. Return to text
  35. HL Hansard, 14 January 2026, col 1727. Return to text
  36. HL Hansard, 14 January 2026, col 1728. Return to text