National litter and flytipping strategy: update and year 2 action plan
This report sets out the progress made on delivering the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy (NLFS) and contains updates on the year one action plan and outlines actions for year 2, this includes a number of continuing actions that have been progressing since 1 April 2024.
2 Year one action plan - update on progress
With the exception of the Circular Economy Act actions all Year 1 actions were undertaken between June 2023 and March 2024.
| Year 1 action | Lead Organisation | Progress/update |
|---|---|---|
| Litter | ||
| 1. Proposed change in legislation: Introduction of new powers to impose a civil penalty on the registered keeper of a vehicle from which a littering offence is committed. | Scottish Government | The Circular Economy Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 26 June 2024. This section of the legislation requires secondary legislation to come into effect. |
| 2. Targeted behaviour-based interventions: Work with key stakeholders (local authorities, duty bodies and businesses) to test collaborative approaches to deliver one or two innovative behaviour-based interventions utilising existing data to identify and target litter types or items (including new and emerging types), evaluating their impact and potential for wider roll-out. | Keep Scotland Beautiful | A collaborative behaviour-based intervention was developed and delivered in the Forth Valley. This focused on tackling food and drink on the go litter and delivered a measurable reduction in ground litter. The intervention was delivered in partnership with Clackmannanshire Council, Falkirk Council, Stirling Council, Forth Valley College and supported by Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP). Further information is provided in the news story[1] and full report[2]. |
| 3. Empowering communities: Working alongside local authorities and other relevant stakeholders, develop and promote a national online litter hub to provide information, advice and support to community groups and other relevant local organisations on tackling litter and littering behaviour. | Keep Scotland Beautiful | The Online Hub went live on 1 April 2024, active promotion of the Hub and the information available will take place in Year 2, data will be gathered on numbers accessing and utilising the Hub, this is scheduled to be included as part of the evaluation in Year 2.[3] |
| 4. Engaging communities: Create and deliver a national community-focused litter education programme that will build capacity and capability within local communities to enable them to take action at a local level to tackle litter and littering behaviour. | Keep Scotland Beautiful | A national community focused litter education programme has been developed and successfully tested in four council areas across Scotland, the format and content has been revised and updated in line with feedback, ready for wider roll-out. |
| Flytipping | ||
| 5. Proposed changes in legislation: A new fixed penalty regime will be introduced to allow local authorities to issue Fixed Penalty Notices for breaches to householder duty of care obligations in relation to the disposal household waste | Scottish Government | The Circular Economy Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 26 June 2024. This section of the legislation required secondary legislation to come into effect. |
| 6. Proposed changes in legislation: new powers will be introduced to allow enforcement authorities to search and seize vehicles suspected to be involved in illegal waste activity | Scottish Government | The Circular Economy Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 26 June 2024. This section of the legislation required secondary legislation to come into effect. |
| 7. Proposed changes in legislation: Raise flytipping fines to the current maximum in Scotland of £500 | Scottish Government | SSI 2023/335[4], which came into force on 1 January 2024, increased the fixed penalty to £500. |
| 8. Sharing information and best practice: Share information and support resource sharing between key stakeholders and fora including the Litter Managers Network, SPARC and Flytipping Forum. | Scottish Government | This action has not been fully delivered in Year 1. Delivery partners have attended a range of meetings and engagements to share resources and updates on the Strategy, however, this has not been undertaken in a co-ordinated way. |
| 9. Supporting a more effective mechanism for citizen reporting of flytipping: Simplify existing flytipping reporting channels through the closure of Dumb Dumpers. | Scottish Environment Protection Agency | This action was completed with Dumb Dumper and taken offline in March 2023. |
| 10. Clarification of roles and responsibilities: Support key stakeholders to review guidance on roles and responsibility of SEPA, local authorities, national parks and Police Scotland in investigating and enforcing flytipping offences. | Scottish Environment Protection Agency | The initial review of roles and responsibilities highlighted that dividing incidents between enforcement agencies based on scale, location or waste type (as done previously) was not effective or desirable moving forward. SEPA has trialled an alternative approach with partners where partners come together during investigations to explore appropriate enforcement action using the full range of enforcement options available, to drive better enforcement outcomes. This includes the increased use of Civil Monetary Penalties available to SEPA and enhanced/improved reporting to COPFS by a Local Authority/Police Scotland/SEPA which covers all offences involved (for example where offenders have failed to register as carriers of controlled waste). The trialling of this approach will continue into year 2. |
11. Support for landowners: Develop guidance and carry out trials to better support private landowners to deter and deal with flytipping affecting their land. |
Scottish Environment Protection Agency | The Flytipping Private Landowners Grant Fund was established with 3 successful applicants awarded money to take forward varied interventions. See case study for more detail[5]. The fund will run again in Year 2 administered by Zero Waste Scotland. An outline of the kinds of guidance landowners are looking for has been developed. Some of the issues flagged require further engagement with a range of stakeholders to address. |
| 12. Increase use of digital technologies to detect and disrupt flytippers: SEPA will enhance its use of open-source research to identify unregistered waste carriers advertising on-line (as well as rogue operators operating behind a Waste Carrier Registration) and, where they find them, apply both online interventions to deter and disrupt their actions, as well as capture information to support their investigations leading to enforcement action. | Scottish Environment Protection Agency | Through our targeting of unauthorised collectors on Facebook we have achieved the following results in year 1: Number of profiles identified –234 Profiles closed – 24 Texts to unlicensed operators – 39 Information notices issued – 13 Waste carrier applications received – 7 FMPs issued – 1 |
| Litter and Flytipping | ||
| 13. Development of more effective enforcement practices: Conduct an evidence review of enforcement of litter and flytipping offences to better understand, and address, the key barriers to current enforcement practices. | Scottish Government | The Review of litter and flytipping enforcement was published in June 2024[6]. The review findings demonstrate that the actions underway are addressing many of the enforcement challenges. |
| 14. Joint working between stakeholders: Work collaboratively with key stakeholders to scope options to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and consistency of prevention activity that could be trialled and, if successful, scaled up across Scotland. | Zero Waste Scotland | Zero Waste Scotland held 11 workshops from August 2023 to March 2024, engaging sectors from local authorities to producers and retailers of littered and flytipped items. The workshops aimed to gather opinions on improving litter and flytipping prevention in Scotland. Additionally, Zero Waste Scotland collaborated with University College London from January to March 2024 to research litter and flytipping causes and behaviours. This research informed the report, “Causes of Litter and Flytipping: A behavioural systems mapping project,” to be published in the autumn. |
| Data Improvement: Litter and Flytipping | ||
| 15. Development of a Litter & Flytipping Data Strategy to explore and capture the data necessary to support local and national prioritisation, prevention, monitoring and evaluation | Zero Waste Scotland | A Data Strategy Recommendations paper has been developed, drawing upon a number of sources. This included the outputs from the other year one data related actions, and targeted research, including a data mining exercise, all of which focused on data relating to litter and flytipping prevention. |
| 16. Developing litter data: Building on work completed to date with regards to LEAMS/LMS, engage with a wider range of stakeholders and ensure a common approach to data management, analysis and use. | Keep Scotland Beautiful | A Data Management Group has been established with clear Terms of Reference and representation from key stakeholders, regular meetings held to review progress on data actions, discuss issues and opportunities and consider wider data requirements for Strategy. Work was undertaken to develop a Data Register involving engagement with 24 stakeholders and identification of 49 relevant datasets, identifying gaps in existing data as well as similarities and differences, index of relevant research developed, and report prepared on barriers and options for development for the Litter Monitoring System. |
| 17. Improving consistency of litter data: Actively promote and improve quality and consistency of citizen science to support litter data collection, and complement existing programmes. | Keep Scotland Beautiful | Work is undertaken to create index of datasets related to citizen science, 25 datasets identified of which 14 are directly relevant, engaged with 8 relevant stakeholders, work also undertaken to establish how citizen science can be used to support technical data. |
| 18. Improving consistency of flytipping data: Engage and work with a wide range of stakeholders to establish data requirements. Develop structures which improve consistency of this flytipping data and incorporate it into a new Scottish national database on flytipping. | Scottish Environment Protection Agency | A report has been produced collating figures on incident data and enforcement data across local authority areas. A set of agreed reporting requirements and an assessment of the reliability and consistency of the data collected is included in the report. The report also sets out recommendations to improve the collection of information on flytipping going forward. A summary will be published by the SDG/SG. |
| 19. Developing flytipping data: Explore the development of a live picture of flytipping across Scotland. | Scottish Environment Protection Agency | A report has been produced which carried out a first stage feasibility study into a system which contains a live picture of flytipping. Included in it is the benefits and potential issues of a live picture system, a set of criteria for what stakeholders want from the system and an assessment of existing systems to meet these criteria. It also outlines the steps required for a pilot system to be developed. |
| Strategy Governance & Delivery | ||
| 20. Governance and communications: Implement a Governance and Delivery Framework, to manage delivery of the strategy, leveraging the knowledge and skills of stakeholders to lead delivery of actions and provide an established engagement mechanism to support co-ordination, innovation and sharing of information | Scottish Government | The NLFS delivery process has also established project-specific governance mechanisms to provide oversight of Strategy delivery. The Strategy Delivery Group creates clear channels for decision making, monitors progress against the vision, creates ownership amongst stakeholders to support successful delivery and provides a consistent communications channel for stakeholders’ input. |
Contact
Email: NLFS@gov.scot
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