Two people have been arrested in Essex for allegedly illegally dumping waste at six different illegal spots across England, the Environment Agency has said.
The pair are suspected of trashing spots across Warwickshire, Derbyshire and Buckinghamshire, as the country grapples with a proliferating black market in illegal waste, dubbed the “new narcotics”.
Earlier this week, the 54-year-old male and 50-year-old woman, both from Essex, were arrested in a joint raid by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Eastern Regional Special Operations Unit.
The suspects were interviewed and then released as the agencies still needed to gather further information.
The EA said the action was part of a “large-scale, active investigation” into waste crime, fraud and money laundering.
On Tuesday, a fourth person was arrested over a massive waste site in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, leaching pollution into the countryside and waterways.
The EA’s enforcement and investigations manager Emma Viner said: “Waste crime is completely unacceptable, and we are clear that those responsible will be pursued.”
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But the agency has also faced criticism for being too slow to act on reports of waste crime.
The problem sees criminals paid to take away waste and then dodging landfill tax by disposing of it illegally.
It is plaguing communities forced to live next to filthy, stinking tips, and landowners and farmers left to foot the bill for rubbish dumped on their land.
Last year, the EA told a Lords inquiry that its waste crime unit (JUWC) had made 186 arrests during its five-year time, though did not know how many prosecutions that had led to.
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Earl John Russell, a Lib Dem peer who sat on the Lords inquiry, welcomed “the fact that action is finally being taken” but said “the EA is not doing enough”.
“Broken systems are creating broken results, and the criminals are running amok,” he told Sky News.
The EA has been “ill-equipped to address these highly complex and highly lucrative and low-risk serious crime issues”, he added.
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Lord Russell called on the government to review and publish a report on the scale of serious organised waste crime, and said responsibility for tackling it should be escalated from the Environment Agency to the National Crime Agency.
Environment secretary Emma Reynolds said: “With five waste crime arrests in just seven days, we’ve shown that those responsible for these appalling crimes will be tracked down and held to account.”
This year, the government increased the EA’s budget for waste crime enforcement by 50 per cent to £15.6m.
Ms Reynolds said they are also hiring more officers, introducing tougher checks and exploring digital waste tracking.
