§ Norman BakerTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what volume of waste she estimates was illegally fly-tipped in the most recent year for which figures are available, broken down by(a) the nature of the waste and (b) whether it was fly-tipped in urban or rural areas. [184855]
811W
§ Mr. MorleyBoth the Environment Agency and local authorities have responsibilities for tackling fly-tipping. Prior to the launch of the Flycapture database on 5 April 2004, there was no national system for gathering and reporting data on fly-tipping dealt with by the Environment Agency and local authorities. However, the Agency did have its own incident reporting system that did record summary data oil fly-tipping incidents dealt with by the Agency.
The most recent year for which complete data is currently available is 2002. Data for 2003 will be released on the 27 July 2004 with the Agency's Spotlight report.
During 2002, the Agency dealt with 4,997 fly-tipping incidents. Of these, 1,392 incidents involved Construction, Demolition or Excavation wastes (including asbestos), 891 involved Household waste, 432 involved Tyres and 197 involved Fuels/oils.
No data are available on the volume of wastes fly-tipped during 2002 and the Agency does not currently collect data on the urban/rural split.
In future years, the Flycapture database will be able to provide more comprehensive data on the nature and scale of the problem dealt with by both local authorities and the Agency.