Tougher regulation on waste carriers to crack down on fly-tipping after cow licensed to dispose of rubbish

The Environment Department (Defra) said laws will be laid this week to require those who handle and transport waste to prove they are qualified to do so.

Operators found to be mishandling waste will also face up to five years in prison under the new rules, ministers announced.

The changes come as part of a wider Government crackdown on rogue waste operators and criminals after the recent surge in illegal dumping and flytipping across the country.

In the current system, waste carriers only need to register their information with the Environment Agency (EA) through a basic paper-based process, undergoing limited identity and background checks.

Ministers say this means both organised criminals and “rogue operators” who dump waste ineffectively and leave large clean-up bills can enter the system.

The lax process has also allowed animals to receive approval, with the BBC recently reporting that Ann Maidment, director of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), successfully applied for a licence on behalf of one of her cows called Beau Vine.

The new system, which ministers say will come into force in 2027, will require applicants to undergo more rigorous identity and criminal record checks as well as a competency assessment online before they receive a permit.

Approved operators will then have to display their permit number in advertising, including on their vans.

The hope is to make it easier for the public to identify good players or report unlicensed operators, officials said.

Waste minister Mary Creagh said: “Under our new system, Beau Vine would fall at the first hurdle because she doesn’t have a digital identity.

“She’ll have to prove her identity and then prove that she is a technically competent person, so there’s a double hurdle to remove fictitious operators or to stop them gaining access to the system.”

Ann Maidment, director of CLA South West and owner of Beau Vine, said: "Our Beau Vine campaign showed how weak the checks had become: if a cow could be approved in seconds, the system was too easy to abuse. These reforms are a welcome step towards closing that gap, strengthening enforcement in a system that should protect the countryside, not help those who abuse it.

“But good law depends on good implementation. The new permit system must be tough on rogue operators without placing needless cost, delay or bureaucracy on farmers and small rural businesses already doing the right thing.

“It should not have taken a cow getting approved to expose the problem, but it did help make the case for change. The priority now is making sure these reforms punish the criminals, not the compliant.”

It comes as the latest figures show there was a whopping 17 per cent increase in illegal waste dumps across Yorkshire and the Humber from 2023-24 to 2024-25, when the number of incidents reached more than 100,000.

This was the highest level since comparable records began in 2019.

Throughout the Dales, rubbish is being dumped at the side of the roads, with detritus blowing into the stunning Yorkshire countryside.

Bogus waste-disposal companies are using local Facebook groups to offer cash-in-hand collections of household rubbish, and then dumping it in laybys or farm tracks.

These are largely being run by organised criminal gangs, who are raking in huge amounts of cash from the lucrative illegal waste dumping.

The House of Lords’ cross-party Environment and Climate Change Committee said last year that the gangs are then channeling the money into drugs, money laundering and modern slavery.

Only a fraction of fly-tippers or litterers are ever prosecuted, as tracking them down from dumping grounds with no witnesses or CCTV is difficult for overstretched police and council staff.

Experts said that this kind of fly-tipping has become the “new narcotics” and overall the environmental, social and economic costs are totalling £1bn a year.