Fly-tipping costs capital £14.5 Million a year reveals Burstow

11.30.46am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 8th Aug 2006

New figures obtained by Paul Burstow, Liberal Democrat MP for Sutton and Cheam, show that fly-tipping across the capital costs taxpayers 14.5 million a year to clear up.

According to figures obtained from the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs for the period from April 2005 to March 2006, London suffers from a much higher degree of fly-tipping than other parts of the country. A total of 319,068 fly-tipping incidents were recorded in Greater London - equivalent to one incident every two minutes.

While an average of 1.8 incidents of fly-tipping occur per thousand people across the country, this number rises to 3.9 per thousand people in London. In fact, nearly 1 in 3 fly-tipping incidents in the UK takes place in London. A large proportion of this waste is household waste of some sort - 39% of fly-tipped waste in London is domestic.

Haringey has the most fly-tipping reports of all London boroughs, accounting for nearly 20% of all fly-tipping in the capital with 63,767 reported incidents.

The three boroughs worst affected by fly-tipping are:

Haringey 63,767 incidents

Kensington and Chelsea 58,374 incidents

Southwark 24,852 incidents

Commenting on the findings, Paul Burstow MP, said:

"Fly-tipping is a blight on our capital and these figures reveal the true extent of the problem."

"Selfish individuals dumping their household waste mean that London has twice as many fly-tipping incidents per resident than the national average."

"This waste is not only unsightly - it is costly to remove, costing taxpayers over £14.5 million a year to clear and dispose of waste left on our streets, pathways and other public land."