Rubbish investigators search fly-tips for clues

People who dump rubbish illegally have been warned they will be traced and prosecuted by a council's 'enviro-crime squad'.

Councillor Sean Rhodes from South Gloucestershire Council said his team prosecutes one case of fly-tipping every week.

"We will go through tips, we will find evidence and we will take it to court," he explained.

But rubbish dumped on private land is much harder for the authorities to clear up. One illegal dump near Gloucester has been under investigation for seven years, but is still in use, leaving locals "extremely frustrated".

Bob Evely is a rubbish investigator, and smiles at the double meaning. In fact, his team are highly effective at tracing who dumped rubbish illegally.

When I met him, he was picking through a fly-tip at a picnic spot near Swineford, in South Gloucestershire.

Dog walkers were keeping well away from the abandoned bin bags, rotting upholstery and broken computer screens.

But for Evely, heaps like this are "full of clues".

"It's surprising how much you can recover," he said.

"It is about names and addresses and there's vehicle index numbers, sometimes we find boxes with labels on, and we'll work those back to the companies that supplied them."

As he spoke, his eyes lit up at one particularly good find. A speeding ticket from Avon and Somerset Police.

"We've got a name, address, the vehicle index number, the location of the offence as well. So we've got some very, very clear lines of inquiry."

Those identified may not have dumped the rubbish but they must have given it to somebody who did, he said.

And paying someone to dispose of your rubbish without checking they are registered waste operator can also be an offence.

South Gloucestershire Council has decided to prosecute "whenever we can", according to Cllr Rhodes who leads the council's environment teams.

"We have found this is the best way of keeping the volume of fly-tipping in the area to a minimum," he said.

Investigating fly-tips is messy and difficult, but much more straightforward than rubbish dumped on private land.

Over the winter, aerial pictures of huge illegal dumps taken by drones have highlighted the scale of Britain's industrial waste dumping black market.

Waste crime costs the UK more than £1bn according to the Environment Agency, who are charged with policing dumps on private land.

In 2025 they closed down 743 illegal waste sites, but the agency admitted a further 517 were still active.

On private land, gaining access is slow and difficult, and it is often hard to identify who is actually dumping the waste. Many farmers find rubbish dumped on fields without their knowledge, forced to pay to have it removed.

"It's really frustrating," explains Charlie Coats, standing beside a huge dump on the banks of the River Leadon in Gloucestershire.

As parish council chair for the village of Highnam, he has been leading a campaign to get the waste heap - which covers several acres - closed down.

We strolled along a picturesque stretch of the Gloucester and Hereford canal, by the river which feeds into the River Severn just outside Gloucester.

A swan flew low over the water, littered with floating plastic containers and soggy mattresses.

Rising two metres up from the shore, a pile of waste compacted over years has effectively become the land here, studded with plastic, metal and, apparently, asbestos.

"This has been going on for over a decade," he said.

"There is smoke coming up over there, evidence of spontaneous combustion. The fumes for people who live here are awful."

For at least seven years, the Environment Agency has been "investigating" the site.

Coats' committee have written to them regularly for the last two, pleading for an update.

They have now been offered a meeting with officials but have never seen any action on the dump site itself.

"I think seven years, and certainly the past two years, is more than enough time for a plan of action to bring this under effective control to be taken," he said.

An Environment Agency spokesperson said they were "pulling every lever available to us" to track down the culprits.

"We are actively investigating the illegal deposits of waste at Over and we share the community's disgust at these cases of environmental vandalism."

Just finding who owns the land is not easy.

According to UK Land Registry, the landowner lives in Oxfordshire.

The BBC has contacted them asking a number of questions around whether they were aware waste was being tipped onto the site, but has not had a response.

On council land, fly-tip squads pick through rubbish, finding evidence to prosecute people.

But tracking down the culprits behind this huge multi acre smoking rubbish dump has proved much harder.

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