Setting a trap for fly-tippers

• The Sentencing Council is consulting on proposals to increase community orders for fly-tipping and other environmental offences, for example, ordering offenders to clear up rubbish.

As the National Audit Office has noted, ‘the term fly-tipping has no legal significance but is used widely to describe the illegal dumping of waste without the landowners’ permission, or on public land, for example by the roadside’: see ‘Environment Agency—protecting the public from waste’, HC 156 Session 2002-2003 (18 December 2002), para 2.7. As such, it amounts to a specific form of anti-social behaviour which blights urban and rural areas alike. On 7 September 2023 the Sentencing Council published a consultation document entitled ‘Miscellaneous amendments to sentencing guidelines’. Among its pages is a section on a proposed revision to the guidelines on the sentencing of individuals for environmental offences such as fly-tipping.

The consultation

Prior to setting out what is proposed, it is first worth noting a matter