National litter and flytipping strategy: baseline report

Appendix 1 – Local Authority Engagement

Given Scotland has 32 local authorities, all of whom hold data on flytipping incidents in their area and enforcement actions undertaken by their enforcement officers, we approached the Litter Managers Network to help coordinate our outreach.

In the first instance we attended a Litter Managers Network meeting and confirmed that all authorities are represented on the network. Following this we issued a data request, via the Litter Managers Network mailing list. The request took two forms:

• Email Anthesis directly with data on flytipping incidents for financial year 2022/23 with detail on month, waste type, land type and size of the flytipping incident; and
• Complete an enforcement actions survey.

The outreach email included information on the background to the project, what incident data was required, the enforcement actions data being gathered as part of the project, the deadline and how data will be used as part of the project.

Follow up emails were also issued via the Litter Managers Network.

Incident data

In the outreach email we requested that local authorities email Anthesis with the following information:

• The number of flytipping incidents reported to your local authority in the financial year 2022/23 by month;
• The number of flytipping incidents reported to your local authority in the financial year 2022/23 by the size of the waste flytipped;
• The number of flytipping incidents reported to your local authority in the financial year 2022/23 by the type of the waste flytipped; and
• The number of flytipping incidents reported to your local authority in the financial year 2022/23 by the type of the land the flytipping was on.

Enforcement data

Given this data may not necessarily be recorded in one system and be as easy to download and email in Excel format we collected information via an online survey. The survey asked local authorities the following questions:

• How many Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) did your local authority issue for flytipping offences (Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act) in financial year 2022/23?
  • Data split by month (April 2022 to March 2023)
• If you hold data on payment of FPNs, how many of the FPNs issued for flytipping offences (Section 33 offences) in financial year 2022/23 were paid?
• Does your local authority use any other enforcement actions for incidents/cases related to flytipping (Section 33 offences)? Please describe.
• Does your local authority record the number of other enforcement actions taken for incidents/cases related to flytipping (for example Section 59 notices)?
• If your local authority records this information, how many other enforcement actions (i.e., those that are not FPNs) were recorded in the financial year 2022/23 for incidents/cases related to flytipping?
• Does your local authority record if an investigation for an alleged flytipping incident takes place or not?
• Does your local authority accept reports of flytipping from private landowners (regardless of whether action is taken or not)?
• Do you have any other comments?