JUST two fly-tippers have been prosecuted in a year out despite more than 5,400 incidents across the Devon County Council area and Torbay.

The number of fly-tipping incidents across Devon’s eight district councils and Torbay ranged from black sacks of rubbish, to single items and car-boot loads through to tipper-lorry loads.

A total of 712 enforcement actions were carried out, but only 81 fixed penalty notices issued – equivalent to just one per cent of incidents – and only two people were prosecuted.

“We have to stop this,” said Cllr Roger Croad (Conservative, Ivybridge), chair of Devon Authorities strategic waste committee.

Surveillance cameras in fly-tipping hot-spots were discussed as a way to tackle the problem, but it was noted that each district council needed to agree where to place them, advertise them properly to make sure they are legal, and ensure data could be easily accessed and securely stored.

Officers said around £3,000 could be budgeted for each district for cameras from Clean Devon, a partnership that includes Devon’s councils, Devon and Cornwall Police and environmental and countryside organisations, such as the National Farmers’ Union and Devon Wildlife Trust.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) records which authorities issue the most and fewest fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping.

In the 2022/23 financial year, East Devon, Exeter, South Hams and West Devon were among the local authorities that didn’t report any enforcement actions through a Defra system called WasteDataFlow.

Torbay was tenth of councils with the highest fixed penalty notice to incident ratios for that year.

However, in spite of the lack of enforcement, the South West had the lowest number of fly-tipping incidents per 1,000 people, at just nine. England’s rate was more than double, at 19.

Bradley Gerrard