By ‘covered’ we mean ‘paid for out of existing budgets’ but only on land managed by local authorities. Landowners, including farmers and National Parks have a legal duty to keep their land clear of rubbish, so the costs of clearance and disposal fall directly on them. Understandably for private landowners clean-up costs can be devastating and in these cases are not covered by Council Tax.
On average each fly tipping incident on private land costs the landowner £844 according to the Country Land and Business Association (CLA)
Local authorities are also responsible for the removal of fly-tipping from public land, e.g. roads, pavements, lay-bys, parks.
Whilst councils routinely empty bins, littering and fly tipping creates significant additional and unnecessary costs which divert money from other core services so the more litter and fly tipping, the greater the cost to taxpayers.