Officers seized a car in Fradley on 12 August over waste dumped at Whittington. It is the second seizure since April, after a year with no fly-tipping fines.

Lichfield District Council has seized a car over fly-tipping at Whittington, its second vehicle seizure in four months. Two Environmental Protection officers took a white Toyota Yaris Cross from the driver’s workplace in Fradley on Tuesday 12 August, after a member of the public filmed waste being dumped on Brookhay Lane and passed the footage to the council.

The driver was issued a £1,000 fixed penalty notice, which has been paid (Lichfield District Council, 19 August 2026).

A fixed penalty is an out-of-court settlement, not a conviction, and nobody has been named. £1,000 is the maximum a council can charge for fly-tipping by fixed penalty. That ceiling was raised from £400 on 31 July 2023 (The Environmental Offences (Fixed Penalties) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023).

Councillor Richard Cox, the council’s cabinet member for community and public protection, said the case showed “how information from our residents can help us take action against those who think it’s acceptable to dump waste in our district”, and thanked the resident who reported it.

Two seizures in four months, after years of none

This is the second vehicle the council has taken this year. On 23 April officers seized a Ford Transit van and its contents over waste dumped at Stonnall, an offence recorded in November 2025 by covert CCTV the council had installed on Whitacre Lane after identifying it as a hotspot. That driver also paid a £1,000 fixed penalty (Lichfield District Council, 5 May 2026).

Set against the official record, that is a change of approach rather than business as usual. Every council in England reports its fly-tipping and its enforcement to Defra. In Lichfield’s returns for the thirteen years from 2012/13 to 2024/25, the number of vehicles seized is zero in every single year.

The most recent of those years also happens to be the district’s worst for dumping since the first lockdown.

What the record actually shows

Fly-tipping incidents and enforcement actions in Lichfield district, 2019/20 to 2024/25 Reported fly-tipping incidents rose from 337 in 2023/24 to 552 in 2024/25, while the council's total enforcement actions fell from 143 to 77, the fewest in the six years shown. Fly-tips went up in Lichfield. Enforcement went down. Reported incidents and total enforcement actions, Lichfield district, by financial year 0 175 350 525 700 350 678 434 318 337 552 212 305 166 145 143 77 2019/20 2020/21 2021/22 2022/23 2023/24 2024/25 Incidents reported Total enforcement actions Source: Defra, ENV24 fly-tipping incidents and actions taken by local authorities in England, published 25 February 2026. Graphic by Lichfield Today
Lichfield district's reported fly-tips and enforcement actions since 2019/20. Source: Defra ENV24.

Lichfield recorded 552 fly-tipping incidents in 2024/25, up from 337 the year before. That is a rise of 64% in a single year, and the highest count since the 678 logged in 2020/21.

Enforcement moved the other way. The council’s return for the same year records:

  • no fixed penalty notices issued specifically for fly-tipping
  • one fixed penalty for the household duty of care
  • two prosecutions
  • no vehicles seized
  • 72 investigations, down from 133

Total enforcement actions came to 77, the fewest since 2016/17. In 2020/21, when incidents were at their peak, the council took 305 actions.

Two caveats belong with those figures. Defra warns that authorities differ in how thoroughly they log incidents, so a high count can reflect a diligent council rather than a dirtier district. And the returns run only to March 2025, so this year’s fines and seizures will not appear in the published data until early 2027.

The other half of the picture is genuinely good. Of the 30 local authorities in the West Midlands, only six recorded fewer fly-tips than Lichfield in 2024/25: Malvern Hills, Staffordshire Moorlands, Stafford, Cannock Chase, Worcester and Stratford-on-Avon. Across England, Lichfield had the 41st lowest count of 295 authorities. Neighbouring Tamworth logged 1,589 incidents and Stoke-on-Trent 5,893.

Where the dumping happens

Every one of Lichfield’s 552 incidents in 2024/25 was categorised as being on the highway. None were logged on council land, agricultural land or private residential land, which is a reporting convention as much as a description: the district’s problem, as the council records it, is rubbish left on roads and lanes.

The recent cases bear that out. Brookhay Lane at Whittington, Whitacre Lane at Stonnall, Sittles Lane, Church Lane at Hammerwich and the car park at Gentleshaw Common have all featured in enforcement action since late 2025. In March the council reported more than £5,000 in fines issued during the year, including six businesses penalised a total of £1,200 for failing to produce waste transfer notes (Lichfield District Council, 13 March 2026).

Whittington residents may notice a second disruption in the same area this month: Flats Lane and Jerrys Lane at Whittington Heath are closed for ducting work until 28 August, listed on our roadworks page.

What it means for you

  • Report it, do not confront anyone. The council asks residents to note the location, the time, the vehicle registration and a description where it is safe to do so, and to pass that to its Environmental Protection team rather than approaching whoever is dumping. Both seizures this year began with a member of the public recording evidence.
  • Check whoever takes your rubbish away. The household duty of care makes you responsible for where your waste ends up. Pay someone to remove a sofa, they dump it, and you can be fined up to £600 even though you did not dump it. Ask for the carrier’s registration number and keep a note of it.
  • Businesses need waste transfer notes. Six local businesses were fined a total of £1,200 last year for not producing them.
  • A £1,000 penalty is not the ceiling. Fly-tipping can also be prosecuted, which carries an unlimited fine and up to five years in prison. The council brought two prosecutions in 2024/25.

Fly-tipping can be reported through the council’s own fly-tipping pages.

Sources

A fixed penalty notice is an out-of-court disposal and is not a criminal conviction. Nobody involved in these cases has been named by the council or by this publication.