Press Release
For immediate release

CIWM Responds To Rise of Illegal 'Super Sites' and Calls for Waste Crime Taskforce

CIWM has issued a formal position statement on the rise of illegal waste sites across the country, published on 29 January 2026.

Commenting on continued media coverage and proliferation of high-profile illegal waste sites across the UK, CIWM’s Director of Policy, Communications and External Affairs, Dan Cooke, said:

It is evident that waste crime at all levels continues to cause misery and anxiety for local communities and causes real damage to local environments and local economies. We welcome the continued media interest, investigative journalism, and on-going scrutiny of these so-called ‘super sites’ of illegal tipping.

Collectively we should all be clear on where the blame lies for such incidents, which is clearly on the perpetrators.  These are crooks and cowboy operators, often organised criminal gangs, deliberately profiting from other’s misery, from polluting our environment and exploiting loopholes in the system.  They must be held to account wherever possible and to pay the price for their actions – including full clean-up costs where they can be recovered.

Landowners and regulators are often stuck between a rock and a hard place, given the obvious complexity of and gaps in the current legal framework, available powers, responsibilities, and liabilities, along with the limitations in targeted resources and capacity of the regulators.

The findings of the recent House of Lords Environmental Committee Inquiry into Waste Crime, combined with media investigations, clearly illustrate where there are serious shortcomings in the current system.  These include:

• Ineffective enforcement interventions to prevent occurrences at scale – including fraud and misclassification of waste at licenced sites.
• Patchy coordination between some enforcement agencies (including the police and National Crime Agency, Regional Organised Crime Units and the Environment Agency/SEPA/NRW, etc).
• Lack of effective funding provision and protocol to enable more rapid clean-up and remediation of illegally tipped sites (and to retrospectively recover costs).
• The clear imbalance between funding raised through the permitting and monitoring of responsible resources and waste operations, versus the paltry resources available for tackling waste crime.

CIWM continues to support and work with the Environment Agency, the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, local authorities and sector stakeholders on practical measures to tackle waste crime. We applaud some of the successful and ongoing prosecutions, days of action and disruptive activity that they continue to deliver on.  We also applaud the UK Government for continuing to implement regulatory reforms, including digital waste tracking, controllers and transporters regs and permit reforms that will further reduce risks of waste crime. 

Waste crime risks tarnishing the reputation of our responsible and professional resources and waste sector which delivers vital services to households and businesses day-in, day-out.  We all have a collective duty to report any suspected incident of waste crime at every level and to share intelligence that will help call it out.

We now call on Government, regulators and sector stakeholders to come together via a Waste Crime Task Force to identify and analyse the obvious shortcomings, leaks and gaps in the system, and identify practical policy, regulatory and operational measures to better address this continuing scourge.

ENDS

Press contact:

Kacie Foskett
T: +44 (0) 1604 620426
E: kacie.foskett@ciwm.co.uk