Mr Patsy McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to detail any steps he is taking to reduce fly-tipping.
Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs: Enforcement to tackle illegal fly tipping is the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency’s Environmental Crime Unit (ECU) and local district councils.
The ECU operates on the basis of shared responsibility with district councils, recognising that tackling fly‑tipping requires coordinated action across both central and local government. An agreed working protocol supports this approach, ensuring that incidents are dealt with by the most appropriate authority and that responsibilities are applied consistently across Northern Ireland.
All local district councils can exercise powers under Articles 4, 5, and 28 of the Waste and Contaminated Land (Northern Ireland) Order 1997. These provisions confer broadly equivalent investigative, enforcement, and clean‑up powers to those available to NIEA, enabling councils to take direct action where appropriate and reinforcing a complementary, rather than duplicative, enforcement framework.
Councils also have additional powers under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act (Northern Ireland) 2011, further strengthening their role in holding offenders to account and underscoring the shared and collective responsibility for addressing waste crime.
In practice, councils generally lead on smaller‑scale or routine fly‑tipping incidents within their districts, while NIEA, through the ECU, focuses on more serious, complex, or large‑scale illegal dumping. The ECU deploys its regulatory and enforcement powers where fly‑tipping poses significant environmental risk, involves hazardous or substantial quantities of waste, or requires a more specialist response. This role complements the work of district councils and ensures that higher‑impact cases are dealt with effectively, reinforcing a proportionate and coordinated approach to tackling waste crime.
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