OPINION: Waste crime is toxic. It undermines legitimate businesses and costs England’s economy alone around £1 billion a year.
Here at the Environment Agency, we’ve joined forces with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) alongside other government partners to prevent, disrupt and stop waste crime.
Sharing intelligence between agencies and undertaking joint action on the ground helps ensure everyone pays the tax that is legally due, no matter who they are.
The Environment Agency leads on regulatory enforcement of the waste sector, while HMRC is responsible for landfill tax. We’ve worked with HMRC since 2018 to shut down illegal waste sites and individuals who evade paying landfill tax by illegally depositing waste.
Anyone found to be directly depositing waste or knowingly causing or facilitating disposals at an unauthorised waste site can expect to be charged by HMRC for unpaid landfill tax.
And our partnership is working – over the last five years, HMRC has carried out more than 1,300 landfill tax compliance interventions, generating around £1.2 billion.
Landfill tax is designed to encourage the diversion of waste away from landfill and towards more environmentally friendly waste management options. Rogue operators cause significant harm to our precious environment when they choose to dispose of waste illegally.
We want to enable businesses to protect themselves against waste crime by helping them understand the financial and reputational risks they face if their waste ends up in the wrong hands, including the steps they can take to stop waste crime. HMRC wants to support their customers in getting their taxes right and ensure everyone plays by the same rules.
To meet these aims, the Environment Agency shares vital intelligence with HMRC on actors reported to be operating illegally – and everyone can play their part in strengthening our joint efforts by reporting suspicious activity.
Businesses can play a crucial role in supporting our efforts against waste crime. If you suspect any wrongdoing, please contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or report tax fraud on GOV.UK, quoting ‘Waste Management’.
To help know the telltale signs of waste crime and to protect your business from being exploited, HMRC has produced an educational webinar with cross-government partners including the Environment Agency, Tackling criminal activity within the waste industry. This explains what can happen when rogue operators dispose of waste illegally, as well as the impact on the environment and public purse.
Our partnership with HMRC will only grow stronger and ensure those responsible for causing long-lasting damage to our environment by dumping waste and running unauthorised waste sites pay for the destruction they cause.
It is hard to reconcile the comments above with the realities of large scale illegal waste handling and disposal and the huge disconnect between landfill tax data and the Waste Data Interrogator statistics over recent years. Legitimate operators – quite rightly – get held to account over issues that have absolutely no adverse environmental impact, but are simply issues of non-compliance. It is quite galling to then watch a documentary like the excellent ‘Dumped – the great waste scandal’ currently on BBC iplayer and see blatant huge scale illegal activity seemingly carrying on unchecked. All too often, the EA announces successful prosecutions where the time between the offender initially being identified and the closure of the illegal activity has been several years. Until these activities can be dealt with by an effective iron fist and appropriate penalties, it is hard to see how things will change regardless of improved cooperation between the EA and HMRC.