Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government has assessed the wider costs of fly-tipping in Scotland through the Litter and Flytipping: Scale and Cost report, published in 2023. This estimated that the overall direct cost of litter and flytipping in Scotland was £81.2m. Direct costs to public and private bodies, excluding local councils, was estimated to be £20.5m. The research also contains the cost broken down by a number of sectors, including nature-based attractions (including farmland), food and retail/commercial. Insufficient information was received to assess the costs of flytipping for these sectors.

We recognise the financial pressure on private landowners. In 2023-24, the Private Landowners Grant Fund provided targeted support to prevent fly-tipping, including measures such as fencing, signage and surveillance. This extended into 2024-25 to also cover clean-up activities. We continue to explore other ways to support landowners, including involvement in multi-agency enforcement partnerships and clarification of responsibilities under Section 59 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, as amended by the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024.

The Scottish Government recognises the need to continue to address flytipping from commercial sources and has been consistently working with delivery partners under the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy to do so. For example, through SEPA's partnership enforcement activity and digital disruption online actions. Ongoing measures by SEPA to further strengthen how they regulate waste activities will also have an impact.

These activities, alongside cross-agency engagement including through the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce (SOCT) Environmental Waste Crime Working Group and Scottish Partnership Against Rural Crime (SPARC), are helping to build collective understanding and partnership working across the sector.

The Scottish Government does not hold consolidated national data on the number of flytipping reports or enforcement outcomes. Between 2020 and its closure in March 2023, fewer than 900 reports were received annually via the Dumb Dumpers platform. In comparison, the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy’s Flytipping Baseline Report, published in October 2024, sets out that in 2022–23 between 63,378 and 64,486 flytipping incidents were reported directly to local authority systems, depending on the data source.

Data on the proportion of incidents resulting in enforcement action is not held centrally, as this is a matter for local authorities and other enforcement bodies. Improving national consistency in reporting and enforcement data remains a priority under the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy and the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024.

The National Litter and Flytipping Strategy identifies the need for a new national online reporting system and this remains an ambition. Initial work has been undertaken to consider requirements for future reporting improvements, taking into account learning from previous approaches and the recommendations of the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy Baseline Report, which considered available flytipping data and changes that may be needed in the future.

Work is ongoing through the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy Data Management Group, which includes SEPA and local authorities, to explore options for improving data collection and sharing.

Using the data published from the ‘Annual Report on Procurement Activity in Scotland’ the following table provides spend from the last available five years, broken down by supplier location and size. These figures are derived from the Scottish Procurement Information Hub - Scottish Government’s spend analytics shared service.

Public Procurement Spend : Supplier Location and Supplier Size Spend

The National Litter and Flytipping Strategy is a six year plan. According to Keep Scotland Beautiful’s Local Environmental Auditing Monitoring System (LEAMS) data, 92.7% of audited street sites met acceptable litter standards in the most recent survey, a 1.7 percentage point increase from the previous year. LEAMS data by local authority area is available on KSB’s website.

As noted in the response to S6W-38714 on 24 June 2025, flytipping data is held at local authority level.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government engaged with rural and agricultural stakeholders during both the development of the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy and the 2023-24 Action Plan. During the 2022 public consultation on the draft Strategy, responses were received from organisations including NFU Scotland and Scottish Land & Estates, highlighting the specific challenges faced by landowners and farmers in addressing flytipping.

The Scottish Government and the Strategy delivery partners (SEPA, ZWS and KSB) continue to engage with relevant stakeholders and networks, including Scottish Land & Estates and the Scottish Partnership Against Rural Crime, who are represented on the Strategy’s Delivery Group.

Keep Scotland Beautiful has been provided with grants of £620,000 from Zero Waste Scotland and Scottish Government in 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 to deliver aspects of the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy focused on litter prevention, data improvement and supporting community engagement, In relation to community engagement, this supports the Community Litter Hub, provides training and engagement opportunities, and delivers community-led interventions to tackle litter arising from food and drink ‘on-the-go' and roadside litter.

In addition, the Private Landowners Grant Fund, administered by Zero Waste Scotland, provided targeted support to prevent flytipping on private land in 2023–24 and 2024-25. In 2023-24 has supported some community-based interventions. For example, Govanhill Housing Association received £19,960 to undertake improvements to 5 local flytipping hotspots by repurposing the areas affected and promoting this to residents, installing motion sensitive lighting and signage as well as working with residents to encourage appropriate behaviour.

The Scottish Government is committed to strengthening consistent enforcement of flytipping across Scotland. We continue to engage with local authorities and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to understand barriers and share good practice. In 2023, we published an independent review of enforcement powers for litter and flytipping, which made a series of recommendations to improve coordination and effectiveness.

SEPA is piloting partnership models with councils and Police Scotland to address serious incidents. Since 2016, SEPA has issued 132 monetary penalties, totalling over £109,900, including recent Variable Monetary Penalties of more than £2,600 for repeat offenders.

The Scottish Government recognises the particular impact of flytipping on rural and remote areas and is taking steps to address this through National Litter and Flytipping Strategy. The Scottish Partnership Against Rural Crime (SPARC) is represented on the Strategy’s Delivery Group to ensure rural issues are considered and reflected in implementation plans.

Relevant actions include the Private Landowners Grant Fund, administered by Zero Waste Scotland, which ran for two years and supported a number of applicants with measures such as fencing, surveillance cameras and signage to help prevent repeat flytipping incidents. Support is also provided to rural local authorities and communities through enforcement collaboration, data-sharing and best practice exchange coordinated by the Strategy delivery partners.