TEIGNBRIDGE District Council spent more than £54,000 clearing fly-tipped waste in 2025/26, as the number of fixed penalty notices issued for the offence fell to just three.

Figures obtained by the Mid-Devon Advertiser through a Freedom of Information request show the council recorded 1,019 fly-tipping incidents in the latest financial year, with collection and disposal costs reaching £54,176.

The bill was up 20 per cent on the previous year’s £45,127 and was the highest recorded in the five-year period covered by the figures.

Although incidents remain below the 1,131 recorded in 2021/22, the numbers have fluctuated rather than consistently declined.

They fell to 932 in 2022/23, before rising to 985 in 2023/24 and 1,051 in 2024/25.

The figures also reveal a sharp reduction in enforcement action.

Teignbridge District Council issued 14 fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping in 2021/22 and 17 the following year.

But the number dropped to five in 2023/24 and just three in each of the past two financial years.

That represents an 82 per cent fall in penalty notices between 2022/23 and 2025/26, despite more than 1,000 incidents being recorded in the latest year.

Income from penalties has varied considerably, too.

The council received £5,700 in 2022/23, but this plunged to £100 in 2023/24.

Receipts subsequently rose to £503 in 2024/25 and £1,820 in 2025/26, still well below the earlier peak.

The council confirmed that no prosecutions were brought, and no successful prosecutions or convictions were recorded, in any of the five years covered by the response.

Fly-tipping is the illegal deposit of any waste onto land; waste dumped or tipped in a place with no licence to accept it.

This can be both on public or private land.