Herts farmer waiting for answers two months on from £40,000 fly-tipping offence

Two months after more than 40 lorry loads of waste were illegally dumped on farmland near St Albans, the debris remains.

Local farmers say they have little confidence that offenders will be brought to justice.

In June, an estimated 200 tonnes of rubbish – including office furniture, mattresses, garden refuse, clinical waste sand even a dismantled coffin – were left on land set aside for nature as part of the Government’s Sustainable Farming Incentive.

The clean-up costs for the private landowner, an 80-year-old pensioner, are expected to be between £40,000 and £50,000.

Neighbouring arable farmer Will Dickinson, who has been supporting the victim, said progress since the initial investigation had been unclear.

“As far as I know, some individuals have been invited to interview with St Albans’ waste department,” he told Greatest Hits Radio. “I’m not instilled with a great deal of confidence that anything’s happening at all. I need reassurance that these criminals are not simply getting away with it.”

The site, to this day, is still littered with the dumped material.

Mr Dickinson said the landowner had not cleared it – partly because of the prohibitive costs – and noted that while the council had not enforced removal, the waste remained a potential environmental hazard.

“There was evidence of medical equipment, waste oil materials likely to cause harm to the environment,” he said.

Recent weather has added to concerns. The initial hot spell in June raised the risk of fire from metal objects in the waste, while recent heavy rainfall could leach contaminants into the soil.

“The contamination could be quite significant,” Mr Dickinson warned. “As a farmer I’m subject to strict rules on pesticides to protect the environment. Yet with fly-tipping incidents, people tend to just shrug their shoulders and walk away – it gets put in the ‘too difficult’ pile.”

Mr Dickinson recently met with St Albans MP Daisy Cooper, Harpenden and Berkhamsted MP Victoria Collins, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Hertfordshire, the Environment Agency, and NFU representatives to discuss solutions.

Suggestions included better triage systems for reporting incidents, and closer collaboration between councils and police to use forensic and investigative resources more effectively.

He also called for tougher penalties.

“At the moment you’ve got a one-in-20 chance of getting caught, and if you do, 95% of the time you’ll be fined less than £1,000,” he said. “That’s a nonsense when organised crime is involved and huge amounts of money are being made.”

Under current law, private landowners are responsible for removing waste dumped on their land, even when they are victims of the crime.

The NFU has applied for support from the PCC’s Fly-Tipping Fund and continues to campaign for reforms, including stronger enforcement and fairer cost responsibilities.

A Defra spokesperson previously said:

"Waste criminals and fly-tippers who blight our villages and undermine our hard working farmers have gone unpunished for too long.

“This Government is cracking down on cowboy waste operators, including seizing and crushing fly-tippers vans to clean up Britain’s rural areas and support our crucial farming sector.”