Croydon logged 53,268 fly-tips in 2024/25, more than any council in England, and issued three fixed penalty notices for them. What Defra's record shows.

Croydon recorded more fly-tipping than any other local authority in England last year. The council’s own return to Defra logs 53,268 incidents in 2024/25, half as many again as the year before, and the highest of any local authority in England.

Over the same twelve months the council issued three fixed penalty notices specifically for fly-tipping, and brought no prosecutions.

Both numbers come from the same official dataset: Defra’s ENV24 tables, published on 25 February 2026. Every council in England reports its fly-tipping to Defra through WasteDataFlow, so the incidents and the enforcement are counted on the same basis and can be set against each other.

The figures matter this week because the council has just restated its position on dumping. Its 100-days statement on 19 August described a “zero-tolerance approach to fly-tippers”, and a second release the same day announced blitz cleans, mobile recycling centres and new community collection days.

What the Defra record shows

Croydon’s 2024/25 return, in full:

  • 53,268 fly-tipping incidents, up from 35,470 in 2023/24
  • 130.1 incidents per 1,000 residents, second only to Camden’s 166.9 across England
  • 3 fixed penalty notices issued specifically for fly-tipping
  • 0 prosecutions, and 0 vehicles seized
  • 81 investigations, and 156 enforcement actions of all kinds

The borough accounts for roughly one in every nine fly-tips recorded in London, which logged 481,088 across its 33 boroughs, and one in every twenty-four recorded in England, where the total was 1,257,863.

Bar chart of the five London boroughs with the most fly-tipping incidents in 2024 to 2025: Croydon 53,268, Camden 36,216, Lewisham 33,471, Hackney 31,042 and Newham 26,502, each labelled with the number of fixed penalty notices that borough issued for fly-tipping, which was 3 for Croydon, 729 for Camden, 285 for Lewisham, 29 for Hackney and 924 for Newham
Chart by Croydon Today, from Defra ENV24, fly-tipping incidents and actions reported by local authorities in England, 2024/25.

Other London boroughs with far fewer dumps issued far more fines. Ealing issued 1,993 fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping, Harrow 1,242 and Westminster 1,171. Enfield brought 185 prosecutions and Redbridge 26. Only Hounslow, with two, issued fewer fly-tipping penalties than Croydon.

This is not a new drop

Croydon has not always enforced at this level. Its fly-tipping penalty notices over the past five reported years:

Year Incidents Fly-tipping FPNs Prosecutions
2020/21 22,719 35 0
2021/22 26,659 38 9
2022/23 22,852 3 4
2023/24 35,470 1 0
2024/25 53,268 3 0

Total enforcement actions of every kind fell from 2,078 in 2021/22 to 109 in 2023/24, recovering only to 156 last year. Investigations fell from 1,061 to 81 over the same period.

Two things worth being fair about

Councils do not all count the same way. Defra warns that authorities differ in how thoroughly they log incidents, so a high count can mean a diligent council rather than a dirtier borough. Croydon reports on an “all incidents” basis, as 25 of the 33 London boroughs do. The other eight, including Newham and Lambeth, report only fly-tips the public told them about, which will understate their totals against Croydon’s.

Most of it is household waste, not organised dumping. Of the 53,268 incidents, 39,057 were household black bags or other household waste. By volume, 20,685 were a car boot load or less and 9,377 were a single item. Only 1,537 were a tipper lorry load. Clearing those 1,537 largest dumps alone cost £568,334; Defra does not hold a total clearance cost for the borough.

The land-type split explains why residents see it everywhere. 41,560 of the incidents were on footpaths, pavements and bridleways, against 3,201 on the highway itself and 5,098 on other council land.

The £1,000 fine that is still published as £400

In April 2025 the council announced that “fixed penalty notices (FPN) for those caught fly-tipping will be increased from £400 to £1,000”, in line with other London councils.

Checked on 20 August 2026, the council’s own fixed penalty notices for environmental crimes page still lists the fly-tipping penalty as £400, no discount. The same table sets littering at £150 (£100 if paid early) and failure to produce commercial waste documentation at £300. There is no household duty of care penalty listed, and Croydon issued none of those in 2024/25.

The council has not published a correction or an updated schedule, so the amount an offender is now served with is not clear from its own website.

What it means for you

Reporting works better than assuming someone has seen it. Fly-tips on public land are cleared once reported, through the council’s Love Clean Streets app or on 020 8726 6200. A photograph and an accurate location speed it up.

Check the carrier before you pay anyone to take waste away. This is the rule that catches ordinary households. If you hand your old sofa to someone who then dumps it, you can be held responsible under duty of care unless you checked they were a licensed waste carrier. The register is free to search on the Environment Agency’s public register.

The legal routes are not expensive. Croydon’s booked bulky waste collection costs £40.40 or £65.30 depending on the number of items, and the borough’s three reuse and recycling centres take household waste, garden waste and small bulky items free. Both are set out on our Croydon bin collection days page.

Watch for the blitz clean dates. The council named Thornton Heath, Selhurst, Norbury, Shirley and New Addington as the five areas for its blitz cleans, and said locations and timings for those, the mobile recycling centres and the community collection days would be announced “in the coming weeks”. No dates had been published when we checked on 20 August.

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