The Environment Agency (EA) has announced a package of surveillance and investigative measures intended to strengthen its response to waste crime, including an expanded drone programme, new digital screening tools and a larger specialist enforcement unit.

A fleet of 33 trained drone pilots will focus on identifying and monitoring illegal waste sites from the air. Several drones are being upgraded to carry Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) technology, which fires millions of laser points per second to create detailed three-dimensional maps of terrain and waste deposits. The EA has until now deployed Lidar from a dedicated aircraft, mainly to capture flood data. Equipping drones with the technology will allow more flexible, targeted surveying of suspected illegal waste sites. According to the EA, its drones have already logged 272 operational hours since July 2025.

The announcement comes alongside what Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds described as a more than 50 per cent increase to the EA's enforcement budget, now standing at £15.6 million.

New screening tool and expanded enforcement unit

The EA has also developed software that cross-references new Heavy Goods Vehicle operator licence applications, published weekly by the Office of the Traffic Commissioner, against the agency's public register of waste permits and waste carrier licences. Operators without the necessary permits are flagged to enforcement officers for further checks.

The screening tool has already been trialled in East Anglia, where the EA reports it identified a waste company that had relocated its HGV operations to avoid enforcement. The software flagged the new operating centre within a week, enabling officers to intervene before a licence was approved.

The Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC), a multi-agency taskforce bringing together the EA, police forces, the National Crime Agency and HMRC, has been expanded from 13 to 20 specialists, including former police officers. "With organised criminals becoming ever more sophisticated, we are adopting new technologies to find and, importantly, stop them," said Phil Davies, Head of the JUWC.

The measures follow what the EA described as a record year for waste enforcement, with 751 illegal waste sites shut down. In the period up to March 2025, the agency brought 221 prosecutions against waste criminals.

Scale of waste crime in England

The enforcement expansion takes place against a backdrop of persistent waste crime across England. The EA's 2025 National Waste Crime Survey estimated that 20 per cent of all waste is illegally managed, with the cost to the economy estimated at £1 billion per year, with only 27 per cent of waste crimes are thought to be reported to the regulator.

In 2024/25, the EA identified 749 new illegal waste sites – equivalent to 10 new cases per week and an increase from 427 in the previous year. Fly-tipping incidents reported by local authorities in England reached 1.15 million in 2023/24, a six per cent increase on the previous year and large-scale incidents of tipper lorry size or above rose 11 per cent to 47,000.

High-profile cases in recent months have drawn attention to the scale of illegal dumping. In Kidlington, Oxfordshire, several hundred tonnes of waste were deposited near the River Cherwell, prompting the EA to front an £8 million clearance contract.

In October 2025, the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee concluded that waste crime was "critically under-prioritised" and called for a "root and branch review" of England's enforcement response.

The EA's Chief Regulator's report, published in November 2025, recorded a 57 per cent increase in serious pollution incidents from the waste sector in 2024, with the sector accounting for 23 per cent of all serious pollution incidents across England.

Mandatory digital waste tracking is expected to provide a further enforcement tool when it becomes available for all permitted and licensed sites receiving waste in April 2026, with the first mandatory phase from October 2026.