Fly-tipping in St. Helens council area: incidents, enforcement and fines

St. Helens is not ranked against other councils because it counts only fly-tips reported by the public, not all incidents. No change on the year is given: the count went from 3,059 in 2023/24 to 1,366 in 2024/25 while England's changed by +9%; a step that large (more than double or less than half England's change) is treated here as a change in how the council records fly-tipping, so earlier years are not compared.

Back alleyways accounted for the most incidents in St. Helens (837, 61%). 14% of incidents were on highways, against 33% across England.

The most common kind of waste was other household waste, in 867 incidents (63%; England 44%).

8% were a car boot load or less (England 53%). 91% were van loads (England 43%). 6 incidents were the size of a tipper lorry load or larger (0.4%; England 3.7%): 5 tipper lorry loads and 1 significant or multiple load.

The council took 1,668 enforcement actions against fly-tipping in 2024/25. The most common action was investigations (1,668, 100% of all actions; England 68%). It issued no fixed penalty notices. No prosecutions were recorded.

Of the 31 councils in the North West ranked for 2024/25, Pendle had the highest rate (62.0 per 1,000) and Halton the lowest (3.6). Bolton, Burnley and St. Helens 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.