Leeds Fly-Tipping Report

Key findings

• Leeds City Council recorded 13,923 fly-tipping incidents in 2024/25, up 1,643 (13.4%) on 12,280 in 2023/24. England rose 9.1% over the same year.
• That's the second rise in a row on the same counting basis: 11,668 in 2022/23, 12,280 in 2023/24, then 13,923 in 2024/25.
• Household waste made up 64.8% of incidents (9,027). 'Other household waste' alone accounted for 8,066 (57.9%).
• Highways took 35.1% of incidents (4,891) and council land 33.6% (4,673). Both rose by about 18% on 2023/24.
• 70.3% of incidents (9,783) were a small van load or larger. 2,618 (18.8%) were tipper-lorry size or bigger, up 25.3%. Across England the share is about 4%.
• The council took 14,740 enforcement actions, nearly all of them investigations (14,417). It issued 83 fixed penalty notices, down from 157, and brought 10 prosecutions, down from 16.

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The headline trend

Leeds City Council recorded 13,923 fly-tipping incidents in 2024/25 (April 2024 to March 2025), the latest year in Defra's statistics. That's 1,643 more than the 12,280 recorded in 2023/24, a rise of 13.4%. England as a whole rose by 9.1% over the same period, from 1,152,632 to 1,257,863, so Leeds accounted for 1.11% of all incidents recorded in England.

It's the second year running that the Leeds figure has gone up. After a low of 11,668 in 2022/23, it rose to 12,280 and then 13,923, which is 19.3% above that low. It's still 17.0% below the 16,783 recorded in 2020/21, the first year on the current counting basis.

Defra puts Leeds at 16.5 incidents per 1,000 people, based on a population of 845,189. The Yorkshire and The Humber figure is 17.7 and England's is 21.4. Read the next section before comparing these, because Leeds counts differently from most councils.

Why you can't compare with before 2020/21

Leeds changed what it counts. Defra's data records Leeds as reporting 'All incidents' in 2019/20 and 'Customer/public reported only' from 2020/21 onwards. In other words, fly-tips that council staff found and cleared themselves stopped being included. The total fell from 26,079 to 16,783 in that one year. The council's own open data shows the same change: records of fly-tips generated by council staff fell from 29,164 in 2019/20 to 5,079 in 2020/21 and to 172 in 2021/22.

So it would be wrong to say fly-tipping in Leeds halved. The highest figure in the series, 32,411 in 2018/19, was recorded on the old basis and can't be compared with today's numbers. This report only uses 2020/21 to 2024/25 for trends. The 2012/13 figure of 2,977 is also an outlier against 10,501 the following year, and Defra gives no explanation, so we don't use it as a baseline.

Two more cautions. In 2024/25 Leeds was the only West Yorkshire council counting customer-reported incidents only, so its per-person rate shouldn't be ranked against Bradford, Kirklees, Wakefield or Calderdale. And 2020/21 was the first COVID year, when tips closed and bulky and garden collections were suspended for a time.

What's being dumped

Mostly household waste. 'Other household waste', meaning furniture, bags of rubbish, mattresses and the like, accounted for 8,066 incidents (57.9%) in 2024/25. Adding the 961 incidents of household black bags (6.9%) brings household waste to 9,027, or 64.8% of the total.

Waste of unidentified type made up 1,918 incidents (13.8%). White goods such as fridges and washing machines accounted for 839 (6.0%), up 21.1% from 693. Construction, demolition and excavation waste made up 598 (4.3%). Smaller categories were green waste (408), tyres (98), asbestos (55), chemical drums, oil and fuel (52) and clinical waste (14).

Where it's dumped

Roads and council land take most of it. In 2024/25, 4,891 incidents (35.1%) were on highways and 4,673 (33.6%) on council land. Both have risen by about 18% from 4,144 and 3,951 in 2023/24. The remainder were on land of unidentified type (1,667, 12.0%), footpaths and bridleways (1,504, 10.8%) and back alleyways (994, 7.1%).

The council's open data, which uses a separate measure called 'confirmed fly tips', breaks the figures down by ward. In 2024/25 the highest were Hunslet & Riverside (1,540), Gipton & Harehills (1,324), and Beeston & Holbeck and Burmantofts & Richmond Hill, tied on 957. In 2025/26 the order was Gipton & Harehills (1,227), Burmantofts & Richmond Hill (1,042) and Hunslet & Riverside (982).

That open data series counted 14,591 confirmed fly tips in 2024/25, compared with Defra's 13,923. It recorded 13,782 in 2025/26 and 7,325 between April and September 2026. Because it measures something slightly different, we keep it separate from the Defra figures and don't add the two together.

How big the fly-tips are

Leeds fly-tips are large. The most common size in 2024/25 was a small van load, with 5,181 incidents (37.2%). Next came car boot or less (2,142, 15.4%), transit van load (1,984, 14.2%, up 43.9% from 1,379), single item (1,783, 12.8%), significant or multiple loads (1,419, 10.2%), tipper lorry load (1,199, 8.6%) and single black bag (215, 1.5%).

In total, 9,783 incidents (70.3%) were a small van load or larger. 2,618 (18.8%) were the size of a tipper lorry load or bigger, up 25.3% from 2,089 the year before. Across England, that share is about 4%. Part of the gap is likely to come from Leeds counting only customer-reported incidents, since a single bag is less likely to be reported than a lorry load. Even so, the size profile points to dumping by people with vans, not just bags left by bins.

Enforcement

Leeds City Council took 14,740 enforcement actions in 2024/25. Nearly all of them (14,417) were investigations. The rest were 99 statutory notices, 83 fixed penalty notices, 60 duty of care inspections, 52 warning letters, 16 stop and searches, 3 vehicle seizures and 10 prosecutions.

The 83 fixed penalty notices broke down as 27 for fly-tipping, 25 for breaching the householder duty of care, 8 for littering and 23 for other offences. 9 were recorded as paid. The 10 prosecutions led to 9 fines and 1 community sentence, with court fines totalling £3,805. Both fixed penalties (down from 157) and prosecutions (down from 16) fell compared with 2023/24.

Leeds set its fly-tipping fixed penalty at £300, reduced to £200 for early payment, in 2023/24 and 2024/25. Since 01/09/2026, councils in England can set fly-tipping fixed penalties of up to £5,000.

How to make sure your rubbish isn't part of it

Some of the household waste in these figures was handed over in good faith to someone who said they'd take it to the tip. The law puts a duty of care on householders to give waste only to an authorised carrier. If your rubbish is traced back to you, Leeds City Council says you can face a £200 fixed penalty or prosecution. Councils in England can set that penalty anywhere between £150 and £600.

The check is quick. Ask for the carrier's registration number, which starts CBDU in England, and look it up on the Environment Agency public register. Pay by card or bank transfer, get a receipt, and ask where the waste is going. A price that seems too low is a warning sign. Our guide to checking a waste carrier walks you through it, and the glossary explains the terms.

Method and data notes

The main source is Defra's 'Fly-tipping statistics for England', the local authority incidents and actions dataset covering 2012/13 to 2024/25, published on 25/02/2026. The next update is due in January or February 2027. Leeds rows were matched by ONS code E08000035, not by name. Each figure was extracted twice using independent methods and compared cell by cell: 716 values with no mismatches. Land-type and waste-type totals add up to the overall total in every year.

Size figures only cover incidents the council investigated or cleared. They match the total from 2018/19 onwards but not exactly in earlier years. Incidents per 1,000 people are Defra's own figures. The data excludes large-scale incidents dealt with by the Environment Agency and most fly-tipping on private land. Defra warns against judging councils by their incident counts, because higher numbers often reflect more active recording.

The Leeds open data figures count records marked 'Confirmed fly tip' in the council's Environmental Service Requests dataset on Data Mill North, accessed 06/10/2026. It's a live extract that is updated monthly and may be revised. You can download the full yearly breakdown as a CSV from this page.

Licence and attribution

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Defra, WasteDataFlow ('Fly-tipping statistics for England', published 25/02/2026).

Ward and confirmed fly-tip figures: Leeds City Council, Environmental Service Requests, via Data Mill North, Open Government Licence v3.0, accessed 06/10/2026.

You're welcome to use the figures and the CSV. Please credit Defra and Leeds City Council as above, and link to this page if you use our analysis.

Source: Defra, Fly-tipping statistics for England (local authority dataset). Leeds open data: Leeds City Council, Environmental Service requests (Data Mill North). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.