Kent Fly-Tipping: Incidents Rise While Enforcement Varies Widely Between Councils

Kent is the Garden of England. It is also, judging by the latest Defra flytipping data for 24/25, a place where far too many people treat hedgerows, lay-bys and quiet gateways as a free, anonymous tip.

Before we get lost in league tables, a quick translation for normal humans. Fly-tipping is the illegal dumping of “controlled” waste on land that is not licensed to take it. That includes household waste, commercial waste and bulky items such as fridges and mattresses. It is not the same as littering, which is the smaller, everyday dropping of items like cans and wrappers.

Defra’s latest England release underlines why this matters: incidents rose again in 2024/25 (1.26 million), and enforcement actions also increased (572,000). Defra also stresses a key point that is easy to miss: more than one enforcement action can be recorded against a single fly-tipping incident. So “actions” are not the same thing as “cases”, and they are definitely not the same thing as “convictions”.

Now, to Kent.

The Kent picture: incidents up 10.5% in a year
Across Kent’s 12 district councils, recorded fly-tipping incidents rose from 20,670 in 2023/24 to 22,844 in 2024/25. That is a jump of 2,174 incidents in a single year, or 10.5%.

The longer run matters too. Kent’s combined total was 16,909 in 2018/19, 19,470 in 2019/20, then peaked at 25,052 in 2020/21. After falling back to 20,131 by 2022/23, it has now climbed for two consecutive years.

Here is the Kent league table for incidents in 2024/25.
At the top sit Canterbury (3,012), Maidstone (2,817) and Swale (2,654), followed by Thanet (2,578) and Gravesham (2,574). Folkestone & Hythe recorded 2,200. At the other end, Tunbridge Wells recorded 631, Dover 942, and Tonbridge & Malling 1,039.

Now look at how each district changed compared with the 23/24 data.
The biggest jump in Kent was Folkestone & Hythe, up by 556 incidents (from 1,644 to 2,200). Swale rose by 447; Thanet by 404; Sevenoaks by 357 (a 40% rise). Canterbury fell by 93, and Tunbridge Wells fell by 119.

The longer trend shows this isn’t a one-off blip.
Kent’s combined line goes up, down, then up again. The uncomfortable conclusion is that the “problem years” never really ended; they just moved around the map.

The other data recorded by DEFRA: “actions taken” — and why it changes the story
Defra uses “actions” as an umbrella term, covering things like investigations, warning letters, statutory notices, fixed penalty notices and a small number of vehicle seizures. The same incident can generate more than one action.

Across Kent, total recorded actions rose from 6,807 in 2023/24 to 7,142 in 2024/25 — up 4.9%. So incidents rose about twice as fast as actions taken by Kent Councils.

Who did the most in 2024/25?
Gravesham recorded 1,441 actions, Thanet 1,273, and Tonbridge & Malling 1,039. At the bottom were Folkestone & Hythe (177), Ashford (244) and Swale (311). Maidstone recorded 329.

And here is the year-on-year change in actions – 23/24 compared to 24/25.
Thanet increased by 297 actions and Canterbury more than doubled (up 264, from 249 to 513). Tunbridge Wells rose by 200. But three districts moved sharply the other way: Gravesham fell by 277, Folkestone & Hythe fell by 245, and Ashford fell by 173.

Over time, actions have followed a different path to incidents.
Kent’s combined actions peak at 9,422 in 2021/22, then drop, then recover slightly. In other words: the enforcement “engine” does not simply rise and fall in step with the dumping.

Finally, the simplest “enforcement intensity” proxy: actions per 1,000 incidents.
At the top, Tonbridge & Malling records 1,000 actions per 1,000 incidents (roughly one recorded action per incident), Tunbridge Wells 713, and Gravesham 560. At the bottom, Folkestone & Hythe records 81 actions per 1,000 incidents. Maidstone records 117, and Swale 117.

That spread is not subtle. It is telling us one (or more) of the following must be true: councils are resourced very differently; councils record “actions” differently; councils are making different policy choices about whether to prioritise investigation and enforcement over clearance; or evidence availability varies wildly.

And this is where we The Shepway Vox Team keep coming back to the same blunt point. Clearing dumped waste matters, but it is the least ambitious part of the job. If the odds of consequences feel remote, dumping stays attractive. If legal disposal feels expensive or awkward, dumping stays tempting. And if enforcement looks inconsistent from one district to the next, the whole county inherits the mess.

So, the public-interest questions for Kent are straightforward. Why are incidents rising faster than actions? Why do some districts record several times the enforcement intensity of others? What exactly sits inside each council’s “actions” total (investigations, FPNs, notices, prosecutions)? And if councils want the public to believe the crackdown rhetoric, where are the visible, repeatable consequences that make fly-tipping feel like a bad bet?

Because at the moment, the data reads like this: Kent’s dumping problem is climbing again — and the response, depending on your postcode, may be anything from “full-throttle” to “best efforts”.

The Shepway Vox Team

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