Fines 2025
In the UK (and specifically England, where detailed enforcement data is published), local authorities and the Environment Agency rarely jump straight to prosecution for standard Duty of Care breaches. Instead, they rely heavily on Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) and formal warnings to resolve these offences without clogging up the court system.
According to official statistics from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for the 2024/25 reporting year (released in February 2026):
1. Enforcement Actions
Duty of Care Inspections: Local authorities carried out 29,000 formal Duty of Care inspections (checking if businesses and householders were using legal carriers).
Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs): Councils issued 69,000 FPNs across all waste offenses (including fly-tipping and failing to meet the Duty of Care).
2. Court Prosecutions
For cases that bypassed fines and escalated to criminal court (usually involving repeat offenders, businesses, or unlicensed operators who actively fly-tipped the waste they collected):
1,377 total waste prosecutions were brought to court by local authorities in England.
1,250 of those cases resulted in direct court-ordered fines, with an average fine of £539.
The overall court conviction rate for these prosecutions was an exceptionally high 99.1%.
Parallel to local councils, the Environment Agency (which handles large-scale commercial waste criminals) secured 122 successful prosecutions, which resulted in 10 immediate prison sentences.
Note: While the legal “Duty of Care” applies to both householders and businesses, the vast majority of individual citizens who failed to check for a waste carrier licence received on-the-spot FPNs (ranging from £150 to £600) rather than full criminal prosecution in court.