Fly-tipping is the illegal dumping of waste. It can vary in scale significantly from a bin bag of household rubbish to large quantities of waste dumped from trucks.

Fly-tipping spoils our outstanding environment and unnecessarily costs the tax payer to clean up.

Fly-tipping is a serious crime and we always look to catch and prosecute those committing it. It is punishable by up to two years imprisonment and up to a £50,000 fine upon conviction.

A wide variety of wastes are fly-tipped. These include:

  • household rubbish
  • large domestic items e.g. such as fridges and mattresses,
  • garden refuse
  • dead animals
  • tyres
  • clinical waste

We are responsible for the removal of fly-tipping from our property, Devon County Council highways, roads, pavements and lay-bys. We don't remove fly-tipping from private property - this is the responsibility of the landowner. Large scale fly-tippings can be investigated by the Environment Agency or the Police.

When reporting fly-tipping we suggest you download the What3Words app; this means we can now respond to exact locations in very rural areas or in a town environment to find the issue to be dealt with.

The app helps us to find the exact location of the fly-tip by giving small areas 3 unique words. When giving details of the location in our online form, please use the 3 words generated by the app in the location details box.

Our teams have been trialling What3Words and have found it very successful so far, they have found it saves time and enables them to find the fly-tip more accurately, the first time. 

All the emergency services in Devon and Cornwall are now also using the app as a back up to their other location finding systems, so you may find the app useful in future too.

Tell us about a fly tipping problem that you have seen in East Devon.