Press pack: Leeds fly-tipping figures
Key figures, background and a contact for journalists covering fly-tipping in Leeds. Every number comes from Defra's official statistics or Leeds City Council open data.
Our Leeds Fly-Tipping Report sets out the official figures in one place: totals, waste types, locations, sizes and enforcement, with the method and a downloadable CSV. The data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
One caution for anyone reporting the long-term trend: in 2020/21 Leeds switched to counting only fly-tips reported by the public. Figures from before that year aren't comparable with recent ones, and the fall from 26,079 to 16,783 between 2019/20 and 2020/21 doesn't mean fly-tipping halved. The report explains this in full.
We're a licensed waste carrier working in Leeds. We can talk about how householders can check who they're giving their rubbish to, and what the duty of care rules mean in practice. We don't speak for the council or for Defra.
Key figures
- 13,923 fly-tipping incidents recorded in Leeds in 2024/25, up 13.4% on 12,280 in 2023/24 (Defra).
- Second consecutive annual rise on the same counting basis: 11,668 → 12,280 → 13,923.
- 64.8% of incidents (9,027) involved household waste.
- 70.3% were a small van load or larger. 18.8% (2,618) were tipper-lorry size or bigger, against about 4% across England.
- 14,740 enforcement actions in 2024/25, including 83 fixed penalty notices and 10 prosecutions.
Comment
"Most of what gets dumped in Leeds is ordinary household stuff, and a lot of it is van-sized. Some of that will have been handed over to someone who said they'd take it to the tip. Asking for a waste carrier number and looking it up takes two minutes, and it's the best protection a householder has." — [SPOKESPERSON], Leeds Waste Removals
Using the data
You're welcome to reproduce the charts and figures. Please credit 'Defra / Leeds City Council (OGL v3.0), analysis by Leeds Waste Removals' and link to leedswasteremovals.co.uk/leeds-fly-tipping-report.
Download the CSV · Full report and method
Media contact
[SPOKESPERSON], Leeds Waste Removals — info@leedswasteremovals.co.uk, [PHONE]
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.