Fly-tipping has been a stubborn problem in Greater Manchester for years, and it's now getting attention from the very top of government. Andy Burnham, who spent close to a decade as Mayor of Greater Manchester before becoming Prime Minister in July 2026, has made tackling illegal waste dumping one of his early priorities in office.
What was actually announced
On 20 August 2026, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs launched an 8 week consultation on new powers for councils to issue conditional cautions to fly-tipping offenders. Under the proposals, councils would be able to require offenders to complete up to 20 hours of unpaid clean-up work, and to recover the cost of clearing up the mess directly from the people responsible, rather than leaving local taxpayers to cover it.
Environment Secretary Dame Angela Eagle put the principle plainly: if you fly-tip it, you should be the one cleaning it up and paying for it. The consultation runs until 16 October 2026, alongside a new Tackling Waste Crime Alliance bringing together government, regulators, police and councils, and a review into raising Fixed Penalty Notices issued by the Environment Agency.
This builds on an earlier crackdown
These proposals follow a July 2026 increase in the maximum on-the-spot fine for fly-tipping, which rose from £1,000 to £5,000, a 400% jump. Around the same time, Burnham ordered a wider crackdown on organised gangs profiting from illegal waste dumping, promising to clean up several of the country's largest illegal dump sites and giving police and the National Crime Agency a bigger role in pursuing the people behind them. On that announcement, Burnham was blunt that the days of criminals making easy money from dumping waste were over.
Why this matters here specifically
Greater Manchester isn't a passive backdrop to this policy, it's one of the reasons it exists. Manchester issued more in fly-tipping fines than any other local authority in England in 2023/24, and large-scale illegal dumps like the one uncovered in Bickershaw, Wigan, have repeatedly made local headlines. Council officers there have described the scale of the problem as running into thousands of tonnes on a single site, requiring intervention beyond what any individual borough can handle alone.
For households, the direct impact of the new proposals is limited (they target offenders, not people who book a legitimate collection). But the wider signal is worth paying attention to: enforcement is tightening, on-the-spot fines have already gone up fivefold, and councils are being handed sharper tools to trace fly-tipped waste back to whoever arranged for it to be collected in the first place. That makes it more important than ever to check who you're booking.
What you can do
- Always check a collector's waste carrier licence against the Environment Agency's public register before booking
- Ask for a Waste Transfer Note as proof of where your waste actually ends up
- Report suspected fly-tipping to your local council rather than assuming someone else will
Whatever happens with the consultation over the coming weeks, the direction of travel is clear. If you need a collection in Manchester, Salford, Bolton or anywhere else across Greater Manchester, we're a fully licensed carrier and every job comes with proper documentation, so you're never left exposed by someone else's shortcut.