The waste crime crackdown just got £45 million bigger. Honest operators should welcome it.
The government's new Waste Crime Action Plan puts £45 million more behind enforcement. If you run a clean operation, that is good news. Here is why, and what to keep tidy.
On 20 March 2026, the government published its Waste Crime Action Plan. It puts £45 million more behind the Environment Agency over the next three years, and it is being called the toughest crackdown on illegal waste yet.
If you run a clean operation, that is not a threat. It is help. The plan goes after the people who undercut you, the ones who dump waste, dodge the rules and pocket the difference.
What is new
The plan brings in some sharp tools.
- Drivers will get penalty points on their licence for fly-tipping. Enough of them and you lose the right to drive.
- The Environment Agency will name illegal waste operators in public.
- Councils can seize vehicles they think are tied to waste crime.
- The government also wants to let councils hand out conditional cautions, with up to 20 hours of unpaid work.
It already bites
This is not just words. In the eighteen months to the end of 2025, the Environment Agency stopped illegal waste at 1,205 sites and brought 122 prosecutions. Ten people were sent straight to prison.
Why this is good news for you
Two things follow for honest operators.
First, fewer cowboys means a fairer market. Every load a cheat moves on the cheap is a job taken from someone doing it right. Clearing them out levels the ground.
Second, a tougher regime asks you to prove you are one of the good ones. The way you prove it is your paperwork. Your duty of care. Your consignment notes. Records you can produce on the spot, not dig out of a box next week.
We have seen what missing notes cost: a dry cleaner fined more than £10,000, part of it just for failing to produce the paperwork. As enforcement grows, the gap between a clean record and a messy one only gets wider.
What to do
You do not need to do anything dramatic. Keep using a registered carrier. Send the right note with every load. Keep your records for the full period, and keep them somewhere you can search in seconds.
The crackdown is not aimed at you. It does raise the bar on showing your work. Get your records clean and easy to find, and a tougher world becomes a better one to work in.
Consigns keeps your consignment notes digital, signed on site and stored ready to produce. When the inspector asks, the answer is one search away.