Criminal waste gangs: Prime Minister Andy Burnham locks dumping crooks in his crosshairs

Prime Minister Andy Burnham took time out to speak at length to this newspaper this morning, on a broad range of issues, though his focus was on his latest instruction to ministers to put an end to the illegal dumping of waste.

To be clear, that which Mr Burnham was keen to talk about was not fly-tipping, per se, it is the industrialised disposal of the tens of thousands of tons of waste, discharged illegally by organised, criminal gangs whose dumping ground is our countryside.

Millions of pounds are being extracted from the economy at the point of so-called service, as the unscrupulous gangs pose as legitimate waste disposal experts only to then offload their vans and lorries onto sites commandeered without permission.

Millions more are then lost to the clean-up operations, at an eye-watering cost to the tax payer, meaning households are paying twice. All told, it is costing the country £1bn per year. Bradford in West Yorkshire and Ranskill in South Yorkshire have two of the biggest illegal dumps in the country.

Unmanaged and unchecked, substances combine on these sites that cause poisonous toxins to seep into soil, emanate into the atmosphere and leak into watercourses. Quite clearly, that the problem has become so acute and so dangerous suggests abject failure on the part of myriad services, agencies and organisations.

From councils to police forces and certainly by the Environment Agency itself. That a problem described as a potentially lethal plague has been allowed to fester unabated for so long is scandalous.

Let us hope the new powers given to the mayors of West Yorkshire and to Greater Manchester in the first instance, and eventually given to all devolved regions, are backed by the funding and resources required to put an end to this malpractice and bring its perpetrators to justice.