Fly tipping (475A/24)
Request
- How many incidents of illegal dumping of rubbish (also commonly known as fly dumping or fly tipping) occurred within the jurisdiction of your force’s authority last year (i.e. 2023)
- How many incidents of illegal dumping of rubbish (also commonly known as fly dumping or fly tipping) occurred within the jurisdiction of your force’s authority have occurred since the beginning of 2024?
- How many arrests were made by your police force for illegal dumping of rubbish (also commonly known as fly dumping or fly tipping) last year (i.e. 2023)
- How many arrests were made by your police force for illegal dumping of rubbish (also commonly known as fly dumping or fly tipping) since the beginning of 2024
Response
Please find enclosed our response.
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
Fly tipping is not a specific criminal offence – it is covered by environmental legislation.
Therefore, the only way to retrieve any data is by a key word search.
Although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fee’s regulations for the remainder of the request.
When a member of the public phones the Police, it is initially recorded as:
ROC (record of contact): Where information has been received and Police need no further involvement or action. For example: There will be a road closed on XXXX. Police do not attend a ROC.
Incident: An incident is created where Police involvement is required. Incident: An incident is created where Police involvement is required. If a crime is identified from that incident then a crime is created for the relevant offence. Not all incidents have a crime created.
Recorded Crimes: These are created from an incident above and are crimes that require recording / investigating
You have asked for incidents.
Please note that the usual way these incidents are dealt with is by the following:
Members of the public are advised that fly tipping is enforced by the Environment Agency and the Local Authority. Please find below a link where you can contact the relevant authorities that you are interested in.
Report fly-tipping or illegal waste dumping – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
We do however, attend some incidents reported that are happening at the time. For example, a member of the public reports a lorry in a lane tipping waste.
We have done a key word search of the MO notes (modus operandi), we searched for fly tipping or fly dumping.
Keyword searches are notoriously unreliable, the reasons why searches using this method are not reliable include (but are not limited to) the following: –
- a) Searches rely on the keywords being spelt correctly with no grammatical errors
- b) Searches rely on the keywords actually being mentioned in the summary description of the record – if they are mentioned anywhere else within the record but not in the summary, then they will not feature in any results
The following relevant incidents were found with one of the keywords: (for 2024 as at 20 March 2024)
| Incident final code | 2023 | 2024 | Total |
| Admin – Advice Given | 79 | 16 | 95 |
| Admin – Cancel/Exit/Error | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Admin – Intelligence | 7 | 3 | 10 |
| Admin – Property | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| ASB – Environmental | 108 | 21 | 129 |
| ASB – Nuisance | 8 | 2 | 10 |
| ASB – Personal | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| CRIME – Assault | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| CRIME – Burglary (Residential) | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| CRIME – Criminal Damage | 37 | 4 | 41 |
| CRIME – Drugs | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| CRIME – Public Order | 15 | 1 | 16 |
| CRIME – Stalking and Harassment | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| CRIME – Theft (Other) | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| OOF Police generated Activity | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| P9 – PNC Update | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| P9 – Vehicle Observations | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| PSW – Civil Dispute | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| PSW – Suspicious Activity/Premises/Vehicle | 29 | 7 | 36 |
| PSW – Wanted | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| TRANSPORT – Highway Disruption | 5 | 3 | 8 |
| TRANSPORT – Road Related Offence | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Unlawful Encampments | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| WMP Police generated Activity | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Total | 322 | 61 | 383 |
Some of the above incidents may not be relevant.
Please note that from the incidents above there were no arrests recorded. This does not mean that the matters were not dealt with, as arrest is not always necessary, there could have been some form of informal resolution, a fine, referred to the relevant authority, or a voluntary interview arranged or indeed no further action required.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are considered when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be considered when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.
As recommended as good practice by the Information Commissioner’s Office a version of this response may be published on the West Midlands Police website.
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