The Communities and Local Government (CLG) Select Committee is calling on members of the waste and resources industry to submit evidence on the economic and environmental effects of fly-tipping and littering, and suggest ways of tackling it.

The committee state that costs of managing fly-tipping litter in Britain are ‘significant’, identifying that anti-littering campaigning body Keep Britain Tidy invests £1 billion a year on managing litter and its impacts nationally.

As such, an inquiry is being launched into tackling the problem, with stakeholders being asked to provide evidence on the following areas on interest:

• whether current government policies are adequate and give local authorities enough autonomy to tackle the problem in local communities;
• what problems litter and fly-tipping create for local communities and whether the situation is improving or deteriorating;
• how effective the actions of those responsible for managing waste are in the local environment and what local councils, the Environment Agency, and government-funded bodies such as WRAP should do;
• whether current statute, regulation and guidance sets an effective framework to minimise litter and fly-tipping and what, if any, further changes are required; and
• what roles the private citizen and campaign and action groups should have in tackling litter.

Written evidence should be no longer than 3,000 words and can be uploaded onto the committee’s website, while photographic evidence illustrating problems or successful solutions of dealing with litter should be tweeted to @commomsclg using the hashtag #litterpix.

The deadline for written submissions is 2pm Thursday 16 October 2014.

“Litter is a huge problem in this country”

Clive Betts, Chair of the CLG Select Committee, said: “Litter is a problem we can see all around us. It spoils the environment, it’s expensive for councils and others to clean up.

“What we want to do is to question what councils can do to deal with litter problems more effectively in their areas, what government can do, what business can do to try and make sure that litter isn’t available to be spread around. What can we do to stop it, so that all that expense and despoliation doesn’t occur.”

Helen Bingham, Communications and PR Manager for Keep Britain Tidy, added: “Litter is a huge problem in this country, it’s a billion pound problem. That’s 30 million tonnes of rubbish every year, picked up from the streets of England.

“It impacts our communities, it has an economic impact on business and it impacts on the quality of all our lives. What we need is leadership from national government, supporting local government, and communities and charities, like our own who are working hard to the ground to change behaviour, but we need something nationally to bring it all together.”

Read more about tackling Britain’s litter problem.