Fly-tipping in Exeter council area: incidents, enforcement and fines

Exeter is not ranked against other councils because it counts only fly-tips reported by the public, not all incidents. The count was up 22% on 2023/24 (917).

0% of incidents were on highways, against 33% across England. Compared with England, a larger share was on council land (30.3% against 18.4%). The council did not identify the land type for 61% of incidents.

The most common kind of waste was other household waste, in 694 incidents (62%; England 44%). Relative to England, Exeter had a larger share of vehicle parts (3.1% against 0.9%), other electrical items (5.5% against 1.7%) and construction, demolition and excavation waste (11.4% against 5.5%).

51% were a car boot load or less (England 53%). 49% were van loads (England 43%). None was recorded as a tipper lorry load or larger (England 3.7%).

The council took 61 enforcement actions against fly-tipping in 2024/25. The most common action was investigations (45, 74% of all actions; England 68%). It issued 4 fixed penalty notices (6.6% of its actions; England 8.4%): 4 for fly-tipping itself. No prosecutions were recorded.

Of the 24 councils in the South West ranked for 2024/25, Bristol had the highest rate (20.8 per 1,000) and East Devon the lowest (2.5). Exeter, Isles of Scilly and Wiltshire are listed but not ranked: ranks cover only councils that count all incidents, with 100 or more in the year.

About these figures: source, Defra, fly-tipping statistics for England, local authority table (published 25 February 2026), gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. An incident is an illegal deposit of waste that a council dealt with or had reported to it, from a single black bag to multiple lorry loads; councils return the figures to Defra through WasteDataFlow each quarter.

Most fly-tipping on private land is cleared by the landowner and is not counted, and the largest and most organised dumping is dealt with by the Environment Agency, which is not included. Since 2019/20 Defra has recorded whether each council counts all incidents or only those reported by the public or found by its own staff. Councils that count only some incidents record fewer, so they, and councils that changed how they count during the year, are not ranked here. Sizes are recorded for the incidents a council investigated and cleared, so they can add up to fewer than all incidents.

Enforcement actions include investigations, warning letters, fixed penalty notices and prosecutions; court fine figures exclude fixed penalty payments. Rates are per resident, so council areas where many people work or visit but few live, such as central London, have high rates for that reason.

Rates use the population in Defra's table (ONS mid-year estimates). Defra's England total includes every council and its estimates for missing returns. On this page the England and region comparisons add up only the councils that count all incidents, and their enforcement figures leave out councils that returned no actions or only part of a year, as the ranks do; the chart's England line is Defra's total.