AQW 50598/11-16

Mr Robin Newton
Democratic Unionist Party
East Belfast

Tabled Date: 09/11/2015
Answered On Date: 07/12/2015
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of the Environment whether his Department has prosecuted successfully any companies or individuals for fly tipping in the last twelve months.

Answer:

NIEA deals with incidents of Flytipping, the illegal dumping of waste, as an offence under Article 4 of The Waste and Contaminated Land (Northern Ireland) Order 1997. There are also number of legislative provisions that Councils could use to tackle Flytipping and these include: The Waste and Contaminated Land (NI) Order 1997; The Litter (NI) Order 1994; The Pollution Control and Local Government (NI) Order 1978; The Rats and Mice (Destruction) Act 1919 and The Public Health Ireland Act 1878.

NIEA introduced a pilot partnership project to better address flytipping in June 2012. This pilot project was needed to provide data and develop operational arrangements with local Councils with a view to giving them broadly identical investigative, enforcement and clean up powers as the Department under the new Waste and Contaminated Land (amendment Bill). Under the terms of the pilot project, the partner councils could refer certain flytipping cases to NIEA for investigation and clean up when necessary. NIEA has cleaned up all cases of toxic waste including fuel laundered waste which is abandoned outside the confines of the laundering sites, and non-hazardous wastes greater than 20m3 in volume, and since June 2012 has been involved in the cleanup of 600 incidents of flytipping at a cost of over £1.3 million.

NIEA has been working hard to try to prevent illegal activity, including flytipping, from being committed in the first place, and is putting resources to a number of key interventions to ensure that waste is managed in accordance with legal requirements.

Flytipping is often clandestine in nature and usually carried out in remote areas under the cover of darkness making detection of the act and the gathering of evidence, extremely difficult. Whilst the Agency has investigated and cleaned up 118 incidents in the past 12 months, unfortunately there has been insufficient evidence to prepare any prosecution action. However NIEA have initiated new processes for issuing fixed penalty notices for fly tipping offences with two fixed penalty notices issued in the past months.