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Tonight - Season 2026 Episode 16 -
Season 2026, Episode 16
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Season 2026, Episode 16
tele: https://t.me/TopFilmUSA1
#film#shows#usa#usashows#hot#filmhot
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00:05Tonight, rubbish. Are we all paying?
00:09Illegal waste crime is estimated to cost the country around a billion pounds a year.
00:15Fly-tipping at record levels.
00:18Fly-tipping has become really, really bad. This year's figures are 1.2 million fly-tips, which is up 9
00:24% from last year.
00:26Who is responsible?
00:29It's quite frightening that there's that amount of criminality going on that can create this amount of destruction.
00:36And the organised criminal gangs cashing in.
00:39We've seen an increase in the serious and organised crime groups that are involved in waste crime
00:46and then they are using the proceeds of waste crime to fund their other illegal activity,
00:52whether that's gun running or drug and human trafficking.
00:56Good evening and welcome to the Tonight programme.
00:59Across England, more than a million fly-tipping incidents are reported every year.
01:04From rogue collectors taking cash to dispose of your waste,
01:08to organised criminal gangs running illegal dumping sites.
01:12Waste crime is costing millions.
01:14So what's being done to stop it?
01:16I've been finding out.
01:36Tonight has been covering illegal dumping and fly-tipping for over a decade,
01:41and yet we see it getting worse year on year.
01:46It's a depressing sight. It really is.
01:49You've got to shut all the windows and stay in your house.
01:51You've got fly-tipping all down the sides of the road.
01:54What we're seeing is hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste ending up in the wrong place.
02:03Fly-tipping in the UK has become really, really bad.
02:06This year's figures are 1.2 million fly-tips, which is up 9% from last year.
02:13In Hertfordshire, last summer, farmer Will recalls getting a call from his 80-year-old neighbour.
02:21He'd just lost his wife to cancer after quite a protracted period.
02:26And the family had been through quite a lot of trauma,
02:28and he'd phoned me to say that he'd noticed that the block in the gateway had been moved.
02:34When he came here and saw all this waste, he was just devastated.
02:43They got the police out to assess what had happened.
02:49They said there's quite considerable amount of evidence
02:52that indicates that this incident was created by organised criminals.
02:59There's an awful lot of evidence of drugs here.
03:02There's clinical waste, there's needles.
03:05In total, it's thought to be 200 tonnes of waste,
03:09which has sat rotting on his farmland ever since.
03:13He was quoted £60,000 to get rid of it
03:16because of the hazardous nature of what had been dumped.
03:20When we looked at the devastating effect that this was going to have,
03:24when I looked at this mess here with all this rubbish,
03:27we knew that it was something that was way beyond the capacity of either of us to cope with.
03:33What we're seeing now goes way beyond what most people think of as fly-tipping.
03:38Across the UK, we're finding vast illegal waste sites with dumping on an industrial scale.
03:45Like here at Kidlington in Oxfordshire, where an estimated 20,000 tonnes of waste was dumped.
03:53And then in Wigan, another huge site has left local people dealing with the consequences.
04:00We had vermin in our house.
04:02In summer last year, the smells were so unbearable that we couldn't cope.
04:07It gives you major anxiety of what it's going to cause in the future.
04:10We don't know what it's affecting, like, our health.
04:15And at this scale, serious questions are being asked about who's behind it
04:20because authorities increasingly believe these aren't isolated incidents.
04:23They're the work of organised crime groups exploiting the waste system
04:28and making millions in the process.
04:31The Environment Agency is responsible for tackling these crimes.
04:36Illegal waste crime is estimated to cost the country around £1 billion a year.
04:41Last year, the Environment Agency closed 700 illegal waste sites,
04:44working with the police and local authority.
04:46143 of those were high risk.
04:51Tonight has seen first-hand the impact these dumps can have.
04:56In 2023, we filmed at Hodes Wood in Kent,
05:00where an estimated 30,000 tonnes of rubbish was illegally dumped in ancient woods.
05:07What was a protected woodland is now a wasteland.
05:12The ground would have been carpeted with bluebells
05:14and the trees would have been full of singing birds and insects.
05:17Since then, a huge clean-up operation has been underway
05:20and around three-quarters of the waste has now been removed.
05:25And it seems this waste site wasn't the result of just one man and a van.
05:30It was obviously on a really big scale,
05:32so the operation was organised and it was processed
05:35and it was, you know, it was well thought through.
05:37The cost of the clean-up so far at this site is an estimated £15 million.
05:43The government is footing the bill.
05:46It's quite frightening, really,
05:48that there's that amount of organised criminality going on
05:51that can create this amount of destruction.
05:54And how we stop that going forward
05:55is something that the Environment Agency would need to think about,
05:57making sure these things are stopped before they get to this sort of stage.
06:01So how was this allowed to happen and could it have been stopped sooner?
06:07People are becoming more sophisticated,
06:09so it wouldn't be unusual for criminals to scope a site out
06:14that's massed by trees,
06:15to put signage up to say
06:17there's maybe a legitimate construction operation going on.
06:20The criminals are getting away
06:21because people aren't reporting suspicious activity,
06:24not bringing to the attention of the authorities,
06:26so we can intervene early and we can stop it in its tracks
06:29and go to court to get restriction orders that can stop future tipping.
06:35To put rubbish into landfill, there is a tax.
06:39It's thought organised criminals are making money through tax evasion.
06:43General waste is £130.75 per tonne.
06:48But something called inert waste, like soil or rubble,
06:52is just £8.65 per tonne.
06:57Dr Adam Reid is from one of the UK's leading waste companies.
07:02If you're taking a lorry with 30, 40 tonnes worth of material
07:06and you're claiming it's inert, so soil or dirt,
07:10you would be going in at a much lower rate
07:12when actually you've got a lot of active material.
07:14That's one of the obvious ways of defrauding the system.
07:18They might do a spot check,
07:20open up the back of the lorry, have a quick look,
07:22but in reality you might have had a facade of inert
07:25on the top or at the back
07:27to cover up the fact that you've got a much more diverse
07:30material stream going into the site.
07:34Some organised criminal gangs, known as OCGs,
07:37are not using the current landfill sites at all.
07:40Legitimate businesses and householders
07:42can use these companies in good faith,
07:44not realising the waste is not being disposed of correctly.
07:49So if you're being offered cut costs on disposal
07:52or treatment of waste,
07:53we'd encourage people to ask the questions.
07:56Criminals are using the fact that only 27% of waste crime is reported
07:59and the environment agency and the police
08:01and the local authorities and our partners
08:03can't do anything about the 70% that isn't reported.
08:07What's emerging is a criminal industry operating at scale around the country.
08:13But who are these criminals behind these operations?
08:17Dr Kate Tudor is a criminologist.
08:19We have huge businesses owned by organised criminals who have a really mixed portfolio of business activities
08:26that incorporate both illicit and illicit business practices.
08:30We can see that these offending behaviours include things like violent crime, attempted murder, drug supply.
08:37And investigating these crimes is no small feat.
08:42Financial investigations will obviously pay quite a significant part.
08:46So you need specialist teams with the skills and knowledge.
08:49We're talking about businesses with huge land ownership, entire fleets, haulage companies.
08:55They use professional enablers, solicitors, accountants.
09:00The environment secretary says she's taking this problem seriously.
09:05We've seen an increase in the serious and organised crime groups that are involved in waste crime
09:12and then they are using the proceeds of waste crime to fund their other illegal activity
09:18whether that's gun running or drug and human trafficking.
09:21Often what they're doing is that they're putting the waste in a place
09:24that people won't necessarily notice to start with.
09:27The government has put together a waste action plan to tackle the issues.
09:32We've doubled the enforcement budget of the Environment Agency to put more boots on the ground
09:37to boost their capability to crack down on these criminals
09:41and also to prevent these waste dumps from happening in the first place.
09:47But some critics believe that how we've been dealing with these criminals is not a good enough deterrent.
09:54Quite often we see that prison sentences tend to be suspended and run alongside a financial penalty.
10:02When we start to look at the kind of more sophisticated end of the spectrum
10:05sometimes these penalties pale in comparison to the revenue generated by these companies
10:10so they don't offer meaningful penalties at all.
10:14Whilst dealing with large scale environmental crime is the job of the Environment Agency
10:19the fly tipping we're often seeing on the streets is the job of local authorities.
10:25In Leeds they've created the Serious Environmental Crime Team
10:29who do proactive stop and searches with police.
10:35Police are pulling in vans. They're essentially looking at kind of waste carriers
10:39making sure they've got waste carriers license.
10:42Under new government plans local authorities will be getting more powers
10:47and the ability to take points off the driver's license of any waste criminal
10:51as well as fines for any fly tipping.
10:55Many local authorities like Leeds are investigating these fly tips
10:59to try and stop them from becoming a larger problem.
11:04Looks like asbestos.
11:05Looks like it, yeah. Absolutely.
11:09Without any evidence linking this dumped asbestos to the perpetrator
11:14the council will be forced to foot the £720 bill for the clean-up.
11:23And while some councils are taking a very proactive approach to fly tipping
11:27others have their critics, like Simon in West Northamptonshire.
11:32This is Falkett, it's a hamlet.
11:35We've lived here, it'll be 38 years in September.
11:40A nice quiet spot.
11:44There are lots of incidents along this road of this sort of fly tipping.
11:48We've got a couple of tyres here.
11:51There's another tyre just up there.
11:53Bags and plastic and one thing and another.
11:56When I see this fly tipping I feel angry because nobody's doing anything about it.
12:01Despite four years of raising concerns
12:03Simon says little has changed.
12:06Then, last December, action was taken by the council, clearing one stretch of road.
12:13There is a short section of ditch which was filmed by a local news station.
12:20And following their reporting, it was cleared within 24 hours.
12:25Now, I'm not saying that that was anything to do with the news channel or me.
12:30It might just have been a coincidence.
12:31But if they're prepared to clear that particular ditch, why can't they clear all the other ditches?
12:39Simon admits the council had informed him of the reason for not picking up fly tipped rubbish in the ditches.
12:46The local authority claimed this to be on private land and won't collect it.
12:54But after seeking legal advice, Simon believes the land is the council's responsibility.
12:59Now, at a stalemate, he's taken drastic action, refusing to pay his council tax despite the risk of prison.
13:09Withholding my council tax per se is unlikely to sway West Northamptonshire Council one way or the other.
13:18But what I hope to gain from it is the publicity.
13:21And I hope through this that West Northamptonshire Council will sit up and they might devise a plan, a policy
13:27to do something about it.
13:30We contacted West Northamptonshire Council and they told us.
13:35Last year, we marked double yellow lines and our enforcement teams monitor the area.
13:40We would remind everyone to take their litter home with them.
13:43Our waste teams pay regular visits to clear any litter from this area.
13:47Litter picking costs West Northamptonshire's taxpayers money, which could be put to better use delivering other services.
13:56Local authorities clear waste from public land, but when it's dumped on private property, the responsibility shifts to the landowner.
14:05I've spoken to farmers who've been affected by fly tipping.
14:09It's terrible for them.
14:10And what we're doing is we're working with the insurance industry, the NFU and others to make sure that if
14:18it's possible to have an affordable insurance product for farmers so that they can insure against the risk of this
14:25sort of fly tipping.
14:26Because it is really difficult for them to fund the clear up.
14:30But equally, the government can't be responsible and local authorities can't be responsible for clearing up waste sites on private
14:38land.
14:40And cleanups on public property are putting financial pressure on councils across the country.
14:48In Birmingham, bin strikes, which have been going on for more than a year now, are making the situation even
14:54worse.
14:55We've seen a lot of fly tipping in alleyways, side streets, and we just don't know where it's coming from.
15:03We have had experiences with vermin out the back.
15:06We have come in in the mornings and we found dead rats outside, and obviously we're the ones who are
15:10having to then dispose of them.
15:13Danny works in a local pet shop in Birmingham. The rear of the shop backs out onto privately owned alleyways
15:20full of rubbish.
15:24There is only two entrances to get in and out of this shop, the front and the back entrance.
15:29Both of those obviously are used for fire exits.
15:31Fly tipping has caused issues in the past.
15:34Obviously with all of the blockaging out the back, it in itself is a massive fire risk.
15:41Birmingham council did clean it out once in the past two years.
15:45Local business owners have also tried, but the rubbish just keeps coming back.
15:51We removed it a few times, we cleaned it ourselves, you know, make sure it's clean and everything.
15:56And the next day, it just piled up, piled up.
16:00One local woman is trying to inspire others with her litter picking.
16:05I do think that there's a collective responsibility.
16:09What you want to do is galvanise people in the community to come on board and to, you know, join
16:14the local litter picking groups and we work together to get this cleared.
16:18Birmingham city council told us.
16:21These alleyways are private land and it is the responsibility of the owners to do what they can to prevent
16:26fly tipping in the first place and remove if it accumulates.
16:31We have removed rubbish from this area previously, but it is not fair that it is done at the expense
16:36of the taxpayer.
16:37We are continuing to try to identify the fly tippers responsible and are committed to prosecuting fly tippers whenever possible.
16:46But clean up Britain think they have solutions to the fly tipping on our streets and roads.
16:51There's no doubt that the legal cost of disposing waste is having an effect on the problems of fly tipping.
16:58It's £130.75 to take a tonne of waste to a legitimate site.
17:06If you compare it to other European countries, it's more than 100% more than the second highest, which is
17:12France.
17:13So that is a big, big deterring factor.
17:16They believe if landfill tax was cheaper, more people would use legitimate waste sites.
17:22One of the things clean up Britain wants to see is that land tax reduced by 50% to around
17:29£65 and that would make it much more affordable.
17:31In 2014, the government took in £1.1 billion of taxation from landfill tax.
17:40And in 2024, that had been reduced to £600 million.
17:46So over that ten year period, the tax has gone up, the receipts from the landfill tax have reduced
17:50and there's been a huge increase in the number of fly tips taking place.
17:55And it's not the only measure clean up Britain would like to see put in place.
17:59If the government made it illegal for any private individual to pay cash to a waste carrier person to take
18:08away their waste.
18:09And the reason for that is because at the moment, obviously, you can't trace somebody if you give them cash.
18:14But if there's a digital trail, then obviously there is a trail, you can trace them back.
18:19The government told tonight.
18:20Our toughest ever crackdown on illegal waste includes more police style powers for the Environment Agency.
18:27Powers for courts to hand out points on driving licenses for fly tipping and increased penalties for those who mishandle
18:34waste with up to five years imprisonment.
18:36We do not intend to introduce a ban on cash or cash only transactions for waste services.
18:43Landfill tax provides an economic incentive to divert waste away from landfill and has contributed to a 90% reduction
18:52in local authority waste sent to landfill in England.
18:57Meanwhile in Leeds, the serious environmental crime team have had reports of another fly tip site on the edge of
19:03the city.
19:05There's a mattress here, there's some Christmas trees, toys, it's all signs of a house.
19:12Someone perhaps with kids has just paid someone to have waste taken away.
19:17This time the team are in luck.
19:19So we've got a TV box and it's got a name and address on here as well, a little bit
19:23delivered so we can have a look at other bits of evidence on here.
19:27If the original owner of the box can be identified, they could face a £200 fine for failing to properly
19:34check the waste collector had a license.
19:36Those responsible for fly tipping can face a £300 fine on the spot, while more serious cases prosecuted in court
19:45can carry unlimited fines.
19:47In Leeds they are determined to crack down hard on fly tipping.
19:53Fly tipping is a waste crime.
19:55In Leeds we had over 13,000 incidents last year, but we are booking the national trend.
20:02Leeds City Council spent £650,000 last year disposing of fly tipped waste, down 10% from the previous year.
20:13We've managed to reduce fly tipping in Leeds. Our numbers have gone down over the years.
20:18We've had several suspended prison sentences.
20:21I think the message is loud and clear. We are very serious about it and serial fly tippers, they are
20:27taking notice of it.
20:27There are fly tipping hotspots around the country, like this one in Baxley in East London, which tonight filmed three
20:35years ago.
20:37Nearby businesses like this timber merchants have lived with the impact for years.
20:43Watching the problem build, clear and return again.
20:47In terms of when it was at its worst, probably two, three years ago, when the tipping was five or
20:53six feet above the ditch.
20:56But even after a full clean up earlier this year, it didn't take long for the dumping to start again,
21:02this time caught on camera.
21:04We came in on the Monday morning and this is what we found.
21:08This van, and you can see there's a completely clear ditch.
21:12And you can see them very clearly just pulling over and the camera picked up the registration number.
21:17And that was the day after 120 tonnes had been removed from the area, just right outside of these premises.
21:26The registration plate was reported and they discovered it was fake.
21:31It tells me there's a complete disregard for the law and for what we've done.
21:36The frustration is understandable, but the government believes in its latest strategy.
21:43I hope in time, once we see convictions coming through, that that will act as more of a deterrent.
21:49Because what we are saying to these waste criminals is, if you dump illegally, we are coming after you and
21:55you will be held to account and you will be forced to pay for the clean up.
21:59Meanwhile, back on the farm in Hertfordshire, there's been some good news.
22:04People have set up a funding site to help pay for the clear up of the farmer's field.
22:09The staggering thing about the goodness of humanity in this country is that in four days, we raise nearly £60
22:17,000.
22:18By next week, the rubbish will be gone, thanks to the kindness of strangers.
22:25And while sites like Kidlington and Hodeswood are now also being cleared, we all need to be vigilant and report
22:33these illegal waste dumps early to help give authorities, and more importantly, our environment a chance.
22:43That's it for tonight's programme. If you want to continue the conversation, please join in using the hashtag ITVtonight on
22:49X, Facebook and Instagram.
22:51Until next time, good evening and thank you for watching.
22:56Coming up next week, as household bills soar, what can we do to save money?
23:01How would you feel about spending £100 a week on your groceries? And we do it in cash, so once
23:09it's gone, it's gone.
23:10It's a challenge, but it's doable.
23:12OK.
23:12Yeah.
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