Fly-tipping in England had to be cleaned up 1.08 million times by local councils in 2022-23, the latest government figures reveal. But private landowners say the scale of countryside fly-tipping is forcing them to turn farms into "medieval forts". The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) said fly-tipping on private land and fields is "going unrecorded on a mass scale", and that concrete blocks and security fencing were being used to keep out waste criminals.
One farmer, Colin Rayner, who has 2,000 acres of arable land across east Berkshire and south Buckinghamshire, said he has waste dumped on his land almost every weekend. "We have even had an incident where we were combining in a field, and a lorry drove into the field, opened its tailgate and tipped a load of rubbish out and drove off again. They are that brazen," he said. Mr Rayner added that the total annual clean-up costs were "unimaginable - it affects the viability of the business