‘Appalling’ illegal waste dump in ancient Kent woodland fully cleared
It's taken 15 months and £15.5M to clean up Hoad's Wood in Ashford
Last updated 9th Oct 2026
Almost 40,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste have been cleared from an ancient woodland in Kent after a 15-month operation, the Environment Agency said.
The regulator said it took 2,500 lorry-loads to clear the household and construction waste at the beauty spot at Hoad’s Wood in Ashford.
The entire operation is expected to cost around £15.5 million, according to officials.
Designated as a “site of special scientific interest”, the protected woodland is home to rare plants and wildlife.
But it was targeted by organised criminals who piled waste up to 15 feet high starting in 2023 before authorities shut the operation down.
Acumen Waste Services Ltd and more than 50 specialist workers took part in the Environment Agency-led clean-up, which began in June 2025.
The regulator said public access to the site will remain restricted to give nature space and time to recover.
Matthew Higginson, Environment Agency area environmental manager who has been working in waste at the regulator for more than a decade, said the site at Hoad’s Wood was “arguably the worst waste dump I’ve seen”.
“This was appalling,” he said.
“When we first got to the site, everything was grey where the waste had been dumped.”
The smell was “quite revolting”, trees had died, and black liquid from rotting waste was running into the environment, he added.
“The look of it was bad, but the smell and the complete scale of environmental impact was quite staggering.”
As a protected area, Mr Higginson said the clean-up was complex, taking place in a “dynamic environment” that required different organisations, authorities, project managers, waste professionals, archaeologists and nature experts to all work together.
They all approached the operation with the aim of giving nature “the best possible ways to try and recover”, he said.
This included clearing out natural ditches to allow water to flow back through the area and creating interconnected ponds where diggers had to remove pockets of buried waste – both encouraging a wet woodland environment to flourish.
Teams also imported foliage from trees so that it would rot down and help condition the soil to further support plants.
“At the start it was very hard to envisage what the site was going to look like at the end because of the state that it was in,” Mr Higginson said.
“So the position that we got it to is really, really satisfying,” he said, adding that local residents and campaign groups, who visited the site this week, have praised the work.
The Environment Agency began a criminal investigation in 2023, working with the Joint Unit for Waste Crime and Kent Police to track down suspects, with three men being arrested last year.
It comes as part of a wider Government crackdown on waste crime, which has soared across the country in recent years.
Several high-profile dumps – including Hoad’s Wood as well as Bolton House in Wigan, Kidlington in Oxfordshire and Midland Road in Bradford – have sparked a public outcry.
These sites have been prioritised for clean-up operations because of their scale, risk to nearby communities, environmental damage, and links to persistent non-compliance and organised waste crime, the Environment Agency said.
A £6 million operation to clear the Kidlington site, located near the River Cherwell, was completed in August.
Ministers have announced a series of measures such as the increasing use of drones, giving mayors and the police a bigger role, increasing fines for illegal dumping and providing regulators with more powers to confiscate assets from waste criminals to pay for their actions.
A new Waste Crime Crackdown Group, chaired by Environment Secretary Dame Angela Eagle, will also aim to bring regulators and law enforcement together to dismantle criminal operations.
The Environment Agency urges anyone with information that may assist the Hoad’s Wood investigation to call the 24-hour hotline on 0800 807060 or report it anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555111, or their website.