Peers call for crackdown on ‘serious and organised’ waste crime

Martin Shipton

Regulators need to get tough with serious and organised waste crime that has been described as “the new narcotics”, according to a report from a House of Lords committee.

Although the report from the cross-party Environment and Climate Change Committee concentrates on the situation in England, there is evidence that the issues are the same in Wales.

In a letter to Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds dated October 28 2025, the committee raises concerns that despite significant environmental, social and economic costs, in the region of £1bn every year, waste crime is being drastically under-prioritised.

Inquiry

The letter follows a short inquiry which heard from a range of witnesses including community groups, the Environment Agency, a UK Government Minister and officials, Police and Crime Commissioners and waste management specialists.

While it welcomes and supports the Government’s commitment to transitioning to a circular economy to help eliminate waste crime, the committee is also calling on:

*the UK Government to establish a single telephone number and online reporting tool for the public to report waste crime;

* the Joint Unit for Waste Crime to improve collaboration between bodies with responsibility for waste crime at the local level (especially policing and local government), particularly in respect of the handling of reports and sharing of intelligence;

* the Treasury to review rules on managing public money preventing the Environment Agency to divert resources from its regulatory work to crime enforcement and maintain additional funding provided to the Environment Agency in 2025/26;

* the Environment Agency to implement its proposed waste crime levy;

* the UKGovernment to fully assess the risks that landfill tax reform will increase other forms of waste crime and lead to the abandonment of landfill sites;

* the UK Government to ensure phase 1 of the implementation of mandatory digital waste tracking is delivered on time and provide funding to enable the expansion of digital waste tracking to waste carriers from 2027;

* the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to develop interim targets with a comprehensive set of metrics to measure progress, which should be published quarterly.

Money laundering

Baroness Sheehan, Chair of the committee that produced the report, said; “During our inquiry we heard that over 38 million tonnes of waste (enough to fill Wembley Stadium 35 times) is being illegally dumped each year mainly by established organised crime groups involved in drugs, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery.

“Despite the scale and seriousness of the crimes, raised by the members of the public in many cases, we have found multiple failings by the Environment Agency and other agencies from slow responses to repeated public reports through to a woeful lack of successful convictions.

“The Government and other agencies must act now on our recommendations, including starting an independent review. There is no time to waste.”

In July 2024 First Minister Vaughan Gething resigned months after it came to light that he had accepted donations totalling £200k from a company owned by David Neal, a businessman who had received two suspended jail sentences for dumping toxic waste in the sensitive wetlands landscape known as the Gwent Levels.

Weeks before Mr Gething resigned, a major TV investigation revealed that another of Neal’s firms was under suspicion for potential tax evasion.

The company was accused of wrongly characterising the kind of waste it has been dumping at a Pembrokeshire landfill site.

Tax

The Channel 4 Dispatches programme explained how there is a considerable difference between the tax payable for dumping inert waste in landfill sites – around £3 per tonne – from other kinds of waste, where the tax is more than £100 per tonne.

“Mischaracterising” waste can therefore save businesses considerable amounts of money.

The collection of landfill tax was devolved to Wales in 2018.

A spokesperson for the Welsh Revenue Authority, which collects tax on behalf of the Welsh Government, said: “The Welsh Revenue Authority has a range of powers to ensure that landfill site operators pay the right amount of tax. How and when these are used would depend on the circumstances of the issue. We work with a network of partners such as Natural Resources Wales and law enforcement agencies to share information.”

A former driver who worked for Neal’s company Atlantic Waste Recycling in Cardiff, told Dispatches he was required to collect recycling from Neath Port Talbot council, but instead of taking it to the Atlantic Waste Recycling centre to be sorted out, often it wasn’t even unloaded. He said: “Some should have gone to a local incinerator or at least be taken to a different yard. It would all just end up in landfill.

“I don’t think the public would be very happy if they knew that they’re going through all the process of separating and sorting their own recycling and their own waste, and then they find out that it’s just been dumped in the ground.”

Professor Phil Longhurst of Cranfield University told Dispatches: “If a site is miscategorising waste as inert rather than standard waste category, they are saving £100 a tonne on everything that comes into the site. A typical Arctic lorry will carry between 30 and 40 tonnes. This is thousands of pounds per day that a site can avoid paying. So in a year that means millions.”

Dauson Environmental denied that inappropriate waste has been taken to Withyhedge or that lorry loads had been systemically, fraudulently altered.