On-the spot fines for litter, graffiti and fly-tipping are set to rise across Devon as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour, Environment Minister Rebecca Pow announced on Friday (7 July), delivering on the Prime Minister’s Action Plan to clamp down on these crimes and build stronger communities.

Environmental crimes like littering and fly-tipping are cynical and opportunistic, damaging wildlife and nature, creating eyesores and ruining our enjoyment of the great outdoors. The new upper limit to fines will deter people from harming our public spaces in the first place, and ensure that those who continue to offend face tougher consequences.To help equip councils with everything they need and strengthen their arm, government is laying a statutory instrument increasing the upper limits for various fixed penalty notices (FPNs) on Monday 10 July. This means:

  • The maximum amount those caught fly-tipping could be fined will increase from £400 to £1,000
  • The maximum amount those who litter or graffiti could be fined will increase from £150 to £500
  • The maximum amount those who breach their household waste duty of care could be fined will increase from £400 to £600

Environment Secretary, Thérèse Coffey said: 'Everyone loathes litter louts and people who dump rubbish. We are increasing the penalties local councils can apply for this behaviour that spoils our streets and harms nature.'

Environment Minister Rebecca Pow said: 'We’re taking action right across government to crack down on anti-social behaviour and ensure waste criminals face justice – but it’s vital that communities have the tools they need to address the problem as well.

'That’s why we are supporting local authorities by increasing the upper limit for on-the-spot fines and ring fencing the proceeds for clean-up and enforcement operations.'

In addition to increasing the upper limit on fines, last week, the government launched a consultation on ring fencing the receipts from FPNs for litter and fly-tipping to fund local authorities’ enforcement and clean-up activities, such as spending the money raised from fining criminals on further enforcement officers. This would see the money paid by criminals go directly back into repairing the damage from their crimes, or into enforcement efforts to prevent similar incidents from happening again.

The consultation seeks to understand more about how FPN receipts are currently spent and what the impacts of restricting the spending of these receipts to a set list of enforcement and clean-up functions would be.

The government wants councils to take a much tougher approach to this type of anti-social behaviour. They say that 'taking proportionate and effective enforcement action against people who intentionally or carelessly damage their environment is a practical step local authorities can take to change behaviour and deter others from offending.'

In 2021/22, councils dealt with almost 1.1 million incidents of fly-tipping and issued 91,000 fines, along with other enforcement actions.

Today’s announcement marks the latest step in the delivery of the Prime Minister’s Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan and comes during national ASB Awareness Week, run by Resolve and now in its third year, which runs from 3-9 July.