Fly-tipping
Improving · High attention
Incidents fell 14.2% to 937 incidents while England's rose 9.1%.
Fly-tipping incidents recorded by the council each year. Portsmouth local authority.
Source: Defra · 2024/25
Checked 23 September 2026
| Year | Incidents |
|---|---|
| 2021/22 | 525 |
| 2022/23 | 751 |
| 2023/24 | 1,092 |
| 2024/25 | 937 |
Source: Portsmouth City Council
Fly-tipping incidents recorded by the council each year. Portsmouth local authority.
Source: Defra · 2024/25
Checked 23 September 2026
| Year | Fly-tipping fines | Duty-of-care | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021/22 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022/23 | 9 | 9 | 18 |
| 2023/24 | 0 | 17 | 17 |
| 2024/25 | 6 | 32 | 38 |
Source: Portsmouth City Council
| Ward | Hotspot streets |
|---|---|
| Fratton | 8 |
| Central Southsea | 7 |
| Nelson | 4 |
| St Thomas | 2 |
| Baffins | 1 |
| Charles Dickens | 1 |
| Copnor | 1 |
| Eastney & Craneswater | 1 |
| Hilsea | 1 |
| St Jude | 1 |
What changed
Portsmouth recorded 937 incidents in 2024/25, down 14.2% on the year. Across England incidents rose 9.1% over the same period, from 1,152,632 to 1,257,863. Portsmouth moved against the national trend.
Incidents and tonnage fell after the council changed how it patrols and investigates. A fall after a change doesn't prove the change caused it.
How the figures are counted
258 fixed penalty notices for littering/fly-tipping since January 2025 (Portsmouth City Council, "Update on anti-social behaviour", 2 December 2025).
- It combines littering and fly-tipping, which Defra counts as separate offences.
- Its window is "since January 2025" with no published end date — a partial calendar year, not a statutory financial year.
- The council has not published the split between the two offences.
What isn't published
Not published: Portsmouth's own clearance cost is not separately published — Defra discontinued standard unit costs from 2017/18.
Not published: Sub-city geography has been published exactly once: a top-30 road table covering April–September 2024 inside a 2025 scrutiny review. There is no recurring release, no dataset and no map — and that table counts "unauthorised waste", which is broader than fly-tipping.
Not published: The council reports 258 littering/fly-tipping fines since January 2025 but has never published the split between the two offences, nor an end date for that window.
Not published: The split between household fly-tipping and waste dumped by unlicensed commercial carriers in Portsmouth specifically is not published — and interventions differ sharply depending on which dominates.
Not published: How much of the recent fall is attributable to enforcement rather than to changes in reporting or recording is not established.
Overview checked 26 August 2026. Additional figures have their own dates in the evidence explorer. Further context on UK Stat Pack.