Nearly half of farmers say fly-tipping is getting worse, union finds

Nearly half of farmers believe fly-tipping has worsened in their area over the past five years, a new National Farmers’ Union (NFU) survey has found, and more than one in 10 report being subjected to intimidating or violent behaviour by the people dumping waste. For keepers and shoot operators, who are often first to find a blocked gateway or a dumped load on a ride, the findings confirm what the beating line already knows.

What did the survey find?

The union’s latest waste crime survey, released on 6 October, found 49% of farming respondents believe fly-tipping is getting worse, while more than 10% said perpetrators had subjected them to violent or intimidating behaviour when challenged or discovered. Respondents described dealing with dumped waste as “just part of life now”, according to the survey’s findings as reported by Farmers Guardian.

Why does it land on shoots and keepers?

Shoot land carries exactly the quiet lanes, gateways and woodland rides that tippers look for, and the person who finds the load is usually a keeper on a dawn round. Landowners remain legally responsible for clearing waste dumped on private land, and the cost of removal, from mattresses and white goods to industrial loads of hazardous material, falls on the business rather than the tipper.

The intimidation finding will ring true for keepers who work alone and at unsociable hours. Rural police forces have long linked organised fly-tipping with wider rural crime, from hare coursing to machinery theft, and the NFU has repeatedly urged police and crime commissioners to treat waste crime as organised crime rather than litter: its 2024 letter to commissioners on rural crime drew more than 19,000 signatures.

The scale of the problem on private ground is also invisible in the official numbers. Local authorities in England record more than a million fly-tipping incidents a year, but those statistics cover public land only; loads dumped behind a farm gate or on a shoot ride are cleared privately and never counted, which is why the union runs its own survey of members.

What happens next?

The NFU is using the findings to press for stronger enforcement and for the clean-up burden on private landowners to be addressed. Incidents on shoot ground should be reported to the local authority and, where there is a threat or organised dumping, to the police; photographs and vehicle details make prosecutions far likelier. The survey’s full findings are on the NFU’s media centre.